Spritelight
by Makitk
Summary: Princesses are not all born into royalty. Sometimes you can find them in the oddest places. Like on Earth. When her girlfriend reveals she's growing a tail, Josey is far from realizing she will be the last hope for both Earth and Equestria. Nor is she prepared for the hardships that come with the task.
1. Chapter 1

"It's not something you can see, really. I mean, I hide it well. A few long sweaters, a little tucking here and there... it's easy enough to keep people from seeing it. But it starts to hurt after a while, you know?", my best friend Rhonda told me, and I looked up from our homework assignment to look at her in mild confusion.

It was just past 4pm on a Friday and Rhonda had followed me home from school to stay the weekend. We're both students at the only public school in the county, and with my house just a block away and hers outside of the town's borders we often spent our free time at my place. She spends more time in my room than I do myself, really. My mom sometimes jokes that Rhonda should just bunk up with me since she's practically living with us anyway.  
The sun's light was shining into the room from the rectangular window in the West wall, reflecting off of the mirror over the dresser, and illuminated Rhonda's face in a way that made her curious statement and worried look all the more daunting. There was a light in her eyes that wasn't supposed to be there and I wasn't sure if the sunlight was the only reason for it.  
"What are you talking about, Rho-Rho?", I wondered, lifting my left hand up to shield my eyes from the sunlight trying to blind me. "I thought we were doing calculus?"  
Rhonda looked down in sudden embarrassment and her hands dropped to her lap to fidget. "I... I dunno? I guess I just need to talk about it to someone? And you, er... You're my best friend, Jo. You know that, right?" She looked up with a hopeful expression at that and I dropped my pencil on the table and reached out to hold her hands in mine.  
"You know I am. Rho and Jo forever. We made that promise when we were like ten." I smiled, and saw her lips move into a thankful smile as well before her face darkened again.  
"You can't tell anyone, ok?", she asked with a light tone of fear to her voice, and I nodded.  
"You know I keep your secrets safe, hun. Now will you spill it already so we can finish our homework assignments before dinner?", I joked, nudging her side with a wink, but Rhonda looked down at our hands in her lap and seemed to need a moment to steel herself. "Rho? It's ok. Whatever it is, it's ok. You know that. You can tell me anything," I tried, moving my right hand up to lift her chin a bit and make her see my smile, hoping to help her relax.  
Rhonda tried to look away as I did, but then her eyes locked with mine and her shoulders dropped in defeat. "I'm growing a tail."

I blinked as my thoughts ground to a halt. "A... tail?"  
"I'm growing a tail, Jo. I don't know why or how... I just... it's," Rhonda continued, breaking away from me and standing up. "Don't laugh, ok? Don't. Just... Look at it!", she exclaimed, pulling her long brown sweater up to reveal a bundled up collection of purple hairs just above her hip-hugging jeans. Where her tail bone would be.  
I stared at it for a moment, then blinked and stared at it again. I don't think I moved in the time it took for my mind to come to the realization that something - a tail or a ball of hairs of some sort of twine or whatever it was - was stuck to my dearest friend's back.  
I found myself reaching out with my left hand to touch it, and it moved when I did! I could see the muscles underneath Rhonda's skin contract as it did as well! I backed away immediately as it did, putting my hands to my mouth and trying to come to terms with the impossibility of it: Humans didn't grow tails! It was evolutionary impossible! Or so our biology teachers had told us, right?  
"Jo?", Rhonda wondered, looking back at me and quickly hiding her tail from sight again as she saw my shocked expression. "I... I'm sorry, I shouldn't have bothered you with this. I just... I don't know what to do with this," she muttered, falling down on her knees beside me and looking up in great worry.  
I brought my hands up from my mouth to rub heavily at my temples, trying to get my thoughts organized. I was trying to figure out how that tail could have come into existence. Evolution? Magic? Religious retribution for the pranks we played in the past? Even if I was more of the instigator in those and Rhonda just followed along?  
"Jo? Are you mad at me?"  
I quickly snapped out of it at that question and reached down to grab Rhonda's head with both hands, leaning in to press a kiss on top of her head. "Never. I'll never be mad at you. When have I ever been mad at you, Rho-Rho? I just... how... er... I don't..." I pulled back again and my confusion must have been clear enough to be felt from miles away.  
"I don't know how! It just started as some small pains and then the hairs started growing. And they kept growing! Every day they just got longer and longer... I don't know what to do about them! And I feel it... I felt you touching it. I felt it twitch... I don't know what it means," Rhonda whimpered, tears forming in her eyes.  
I slipped off of my chair and wrapped my dear friend in a tight embrace, feeling her shudder against me as she started to cry, gently rubbing her upper back while we sat like that. "It's ok, you're still you. Nothing changed. Let's find out together, ok? We can go to the library and look up what could have been the cause? Or just look it up online if dad ever stops playing his silly games."  
Rhonda sniffled and poked my side. "Your dad."

I snickered at my own mistake. "Right, MY dad. Sorry. You're just the closest thing I have to a sister, Rho-Rho. And we'll deal with it as sisters if you want. We got all weekend, right?"  
I felt her head bob up and down as she tried to compose herself again, her hand moving up behind my back to rub at her face. "You're still the same girl I played hopscotch with back in elementary. I'm never going to abandon you. And I won't tell anyone about it. Cross my heart and hope to die," I moved back a little and crossed a finger over my heart with Rhonda smiling up weakly and mouthing the second part of the sentence with me, "stick a cupcake in my eye!" and we both covered an eye with an open hand while laughing at the craziness of it all.  
It was a silly little thing we picked up from a show we watch every Saturday; My Little Pony. I never really got into the old series since they were far too childish for my tastes. But the new series that started back in 2010? Friendship is Magic? Rhonda and me watched that so often that we memorized almost every episode of it.  
The mane six - Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy - were kicking ass while looking cute and had decent stories written around them to boot!  
"You know, come to think of it," I started, motioning for Rhonda to turn around and watching her faithfully follow my suggestions. She really was too much of a follower. "Lift your sweater again?" She did, and I stared at the way she'd used several hair bands to make a bundle of hair. "Would you mind if I untangle this, Rho?"  
She looked back with a painful expression. "Please be careful if you do? I keep pulling the hairs out whenever I try to."  
"That's because you're working behind your back, silly. I can actually see what I'm doing," I chuckled, and she relaxed a little more. "Ok, let me find a comb first."

"Top drawer."  
I gently slapped the back of Rhonda's head at that. "Why do you know my room so much better than I do?" I got up and picked the comb and a hairbrush from the top drawer of the dresser, then moved back to where Rhonda was still sitting on the floor and looked down at her.  
"You know, this may work better if you lay down on the bed," I realized, and helped her off of the ground. "Higher work area and all that. And you can just let me do my thing while you watch ponies or something."  
"Dragonshy?"  
"Didn't we see that yesterday?", I asked, but Rhonda immediately put up her puppy eyes at me. "You know that doesn't work on me, but sure," I sighed, dropping the comb and brush on the bed and walking over to the television to put the right disc in.  
"You just lay down while, er, it's not still in the tray is it? Oh, yes it is," I sighed and went through the menus to find the right episode, pressed play, and walked back with the remote still in my hands to drop down on the bed beside Rhonda. "You ok, Rho-Rho?", I asked, and she nodded slowly while focusing on the television more than on me.  
I smirked and turned to face the bundle of knotted-up hairs and carefully started to undo them while the title song to the series played in the background. "They're not exactly purple, though," I mumbled, trying to find the right word for the color of the hairs as they got untangled from the multicolored hair bands.  
It didn't look like there was much hair to begin with, but as the knot started to get unraveled the hairs got longer and longer. When I finally got the last hairs freed up I had a bundle of hair in my hands that I could wrap both my hands around and still have it stick out. The hairs stuck to the hair bands were of similar length and were straightening themselves out on the bed beside Rhonda.

"It's more of a fuchsia?", I commented, looking at the strands as I grabbed the brush and gently combed through them.  
"Isn't that purple?", Rhonda wondered, looking up from the end credits and blushing lightly. "That feels nice, Josey."  
"It's pink, actually. How does it feel exactly? A bit like when I brush your hair?", I asked, taking my time with her tail.  
"I think they're technically my hairs as well, Jo," Rhonda remarked, and I smirked.  
"We could just start referring to your hair as your mane. This looks like a pony's tail," I rebutted, and Rhonda went pale. "Just relax, Rho-Rho. There's a lot of knots in this. How long have you had them bundled up like that?"  
"It started last week after I came home from watching the rerun of 'It's About Time'."  
"So six days ago. But they couldn't have been this long back then?", I reasoned, putting the brush aside and taking the comb to a particularly nasty patch of hair that just wouldn't come loose with the brush.  
Rhonda sighed and buried her face in the pillow she was lying on. I could barely make out her mumbling into the fabric. "Tuesday."

I looked at the hairs and tried to judge their growing speed. Six days. Two hands and a bit. About nine or ten inches, or around 25 centimeters to keep my math teacher happy, so a growth rate of about one-and-a-half inch per day. And my math teacher can do the metric conversion on that if he so badly wants it. "So you've just been adding hair band after hair band whenever it got too long to keep in place otherwise?"  
Rhonda nodded and looked back at me with a painful expression. "I couldn't let anyone see it! You know why."  
"Rho-Rho, those movies aren't real. They're not going to lock you up and experiment on you," I sighed, finally freeing up the hairs I was working on and combing through the entire length of her tail without encountering more issues. "That's about it then. Shall we put a little bow around it?" I winked and Rhonda's face turned beet-red.  
"Don't you dare, Jo! Don't joke about it!", she exclaimed, turning her body to move her tail away from me and flicking it in the process. I raised an eyebrow at that, then poked Rho's side.  
"I'm not judging you, silly. But I'm still getting to terms with this as well, ok? You're the one with the tail, but I vowed to protect you back when David and his "gang" tried to make you into their designated victim. Remember? I'm wondering how we can keep you from feeling uncomfortable while also hiding your tail. Or at least making it seem like a fashion accessory. Maybe I could start wearing a belt with a fake tail attached to it and we could act as if we're just starting a new trend?"  
Rhonda bit her lower lip at that while she pulled herself into a little ball on the bed. "I never asked for this."  
I reached out and gently stroked a hand through her hair. The ones on her head, that is. "I know. But we're in this together. I'll always be there for you." I smiled down at her and she gave a weak smile back, reaching up to grab my hand in hers.  
"Thanks, Jo."

"Kids! Dinner!", my mom called from downstairs, and we both looked up at the door before looking at each other again.  
"Ok, so, let's get you one of my baggy pants and we'll tuck the hairs in there for now?", I offered, and got up to get them when Rhonda's hand stopped me.  
"Let me?" she asked, moving to get off of the bed herself.  
I blinked back at her but dropped back to sit on the edge of the bed at her insisting gaze. "Er, sure?"  
"You wouldn't know where to find them anyway," Rhonda joked, flicking her tail at me as she walked away. I'm not sure if she did so consciously or unconsciously, but it was too cute a move for me to be able to come up with a reply.  
She walked over to my "walk-in closet", which was basically just a door with a foot of shelf space behind it, the shelves removed to allow me to hang up my jackets and dresses on one side and stack up boxes with shoes and out-of-season clothing on the other side.  
As she rummaged through the boxes, half bent over, her tail was flicking idly this way or that, happily using its newfound freedom to show itself off like a diva on stage. It was almost hypnotic to look at.  
Rhonda finally found the right box and pulled some baggy slacks from it before turning to return to the bed. Seeing me stare at her with a blush on my cheeks sent her own cheeks ablaze and she quickly raised the pants up to hide her face with. "What?"  
I grinned and pointed behind her at her tail flicking restlessly. "That tail makes you look so incredibly cute, Rho," I couldn't help saying to tease her, "you have no idea."  
Rhonda threw the pants at me with a frown. "No fair joking around it. You have no idea what it feels like. It just keeps twitching," she muttered, taking off her jeans and throwing them my way for good measure as well. I held out the baggy pants she threw at me and got up from the bed, moving behind her to help her tuck the hairs down in them so they would stay out of sight from my parents, then gave her a soft hug.  
"I'm actually kind of jealous of you, Rho-Rho. That tail just looks like the ultimate fashion accessory. If we ever find out how this happened to you, I may need to get myself one as well." I winked at her and turned for the door. "Want to go ahead so I can watch your rear?"  
Rhonda winced at that. "If you keep saying stuff like that your mom is going to think we're lesbians, you know?"  
I shrugged at that and looked away at a random corner of my room. "Better that than having her try to marry me to yet another dumb jock who happens to be her colleague's son. Erf. Frederick was so..."  
"So not you?" Rhonda giggled softly, passing by me onto the landing.  
"Exactly!", I exclaimed, throwing my hands up in the air before following behind and closing the door behind us.

I didn't notice it back then.  
I attributed the shimmer in the center of my room to the sun's rays as it dropped down after another successful day of warming up the region.  
It looked similar to the shimmer you see over the streets on a warm day; The distortion shown over any hot surface.  
The strangest thing about it, the thing my brain immediately threw out as being just my imagination, was that it was shaped like a pony. 


	2. Chapter 2

Dinner helped Rhonda relax a little even if she kept blushing at the jokes my parents kept making. How they would have to hire a moving truck whenever she decided to move in with us, the expenses that would bring with it, how they would have to get a second job just to pay for Rhonda's tuition, and not to mention the amounts of extra groceries they had to buy...  
Mom at least shut dad down when he started about "female hygiene products", saying she could tell him a thing or two about them that would make him lose his appetite and wondering if her cooking was really bad enough that he would chance that. Dad immediately jumped in with all sorts of reasons why mom's cooking was the best, and mom milked it for all it was worth.  
When we were finally done with dinner, we excused ourselves to return to our homework assignments and I caught mom and dad share a glance between one another. Maybe Rhonda was right and they were starting to think I was lesbian even before I was really sure of my own sexuality? What is it with parents?  
I followed Rhonda up the stairs, making sure her tail would be hidden even if there was some reason why the hairs would poke out of her pants, and we went back into the, now darkened, room. I turned on the lights while Rhonda freed her tail from its confinement, and I reached for the brush to help her.  
"Hey, didn't we leave the brush here on the bed?", I wondered, not being able to find it, the comb, or any of the hair bands where I had last seen them.  
Rhonda absentmindedly responded as she was far too occupied reaching back to feel at her tail as if she was still coming to terms with the whole idea of having it. "You must've put it back in the dresser before we went down?"  
I was sure I hadn't done so, but when I opened the dresser I found the comb, brush, and even the hair bands all neatly organized within. "Hm. I suppose I did," I mumbled, picking up the brush and staring at it a bit.  
It was clean. Not a single hair on it. Not mine, not Rhonda's, not Rhonda's tail's. No hair. The comb and hair bands were similarly void of hairs and this made me frown. No matter how hard I tried to keep things like those clean, I was always left with a hair or two on it. It made no sense.  
I closed the drawer with a suspicious look on my face, caught myself in the mirror, and shook the feeling off. It was just another mystery on top of my best friend suddenly growing a tail, and Rhonda's problem came first on my list.

I gently combed out her tail and we went to sit at the desk again to finish our homework, with Rhonda leaning into me a little more than usual. I didn't mind. I was trying to focus on the problems we needed to solve so I wouldn't think about how the brush could've cleaned itself and put itself away.  
Something didn't add up, and that was the whole problem with calculus. I found Rhonda correcting me several times as I made some mistakes that I should have normally caught, but we got through the assignment before bedtime at least.  
Rhonda put on one of my longer nightgowns so her tail wouldn't be inconvenienced, and I slipped into my regular PJs. While it would help her overnight, her tail did keep flicking as we were brushing our teeth, sending the gown moving this way or that as if there was an odd breeze localized around her.  
It made me giggle and spill all of my toothpaste over the bathroom sink until Rhonda realized what was going on and moved to stand behind me so I wouldn't get distracted by it. She was done brushing her teeth before I was, of course. I mean, I had to clean the toothpaste from the sink and mirror and walls. It was a mess.  
Rhonda had already fallen asleep by the time I entered my room again, laying as close to the wall as she could, with ample space for me to crawl in bed beside her. She had taken to hug a large teddy bear I won at a carnival once and which she'd adopted as Mister Safety after it helped her calm down when she'd suffered a particularly bad panic attack.  
I didn't know everything there was to know about Rhonda, but she was a collection of fears and shyness wrapped in a bundle of cuteness and I had felt I needed to protect her ever since I met her in elementary.  
She was a bit like Fluttershy, in a way, and her innocence was refreshing in the otherwise dark and gloomy world around us. I turned off the light, crawled in bed beside her and closed my eyes to go sleep.

Two hours, and a dozen restless turns later, I found myself laying on my left side staring at the alarm clock on the dresser. Just a few minutes past midnight. We'd gone to bed around ten. What was it that kept me up?  
It wasn't the tail. It was just another facet of Rhonda to me. I had accepted it as such and moved on. Of course there were the questions of why and how and what next, but those could wait. We would take care of those questions together.  
Was it the brush? How did it move to my dresser? There was no-one in the house except for me, my parents, and Rhonda. And all four of us had been at the dinner table.  
My window wasn't easily accessible from the outside, mom's thorny rose bushes underneath it made sure of that. The dining room was right next to the hallway and we would have seen anyone going up or down the stairs. How did it move? On its own? Objects like that couldn't move on their own.  
I sighed and blinked at the clock. 0:14 just ticked away to 0:15. I reached up to rub at my forehead a bit. It made no sense. The tail, nor the brush.  
I stopped rubbing my forehead as I felt something odd on it and sat up in bed to feel at it. There was a bump there that shouldn't have been there. It hurt a little as I pressed against it. Had I bumped my head and not realized it?  
I pushed it again and winced from the pain. Whatever it was, it didn't feel right. I pushed up out of bed and walked over to the dresser, trying in the light of the moon to figure out what was on my forehead but couldn't see it. I had no choice. I had to turn on the light and hope Rhonda would sleep through it.  
As I turned for the light switch near the door, I caught a glimpse in the mirror of a shadow moving behind me in the darkness and quickly whirled around to look at it. As I did, a dizzy spell overtook me and I slumped to the ground like a puppet suddenly getting its wires cut.

It was there that I woke up, with Rhonda gently nudging me as she sat beside me with a worried look on her face. "Jo? Wake up please, Jo? Are you ok? What happened?"  
I stirred and felt my muscles cramp up. I had been laying in the wrong position, on a cold floor, and every joint in my body protested as they had to move again.  
"Ngrrf," I groaned, reaching up to rub at my forehead in an attempt to wake up and snapping to full consciousness as I felt the bump in the middle of it. "OUCH!", I exclaimed loudly, the pain from touching it even worse than it had been during the night.  
"Did you hit your head, Josey?", Rhonda asked, helping me get up and sit on the side of the bed. "Did you really sleep on the floor all night?"  
I stared blankly at her, using both my hands to feel at the area surrounding the bump. "I don't fully remember. I think I went to bed?", I started, wincing lightly as I found the edges of the painful area surrounding the bump as I gently prodded at it with my fingertips.  
"I got up after midnight to, er..." The memories were there, but they were getting more and more foggy as I tried to recall them. "Went to the dresser? I..." The shadow!  
I quickly looked around the room but got a dizzy spell immediately following the rash movement of my head and sank sideways against Rhonda's form while trying to stop the room from spinning. "Not feeling too good."  
"Want me to get some water?", I heard Rhonda ask, but her voice sounded like it came from far away. "Jo? Josey?", she called out in concern as I lost consciousness again, the darkness at least giving me a respite from the pain.

I woke up with a wet cloth getting dabbed to my forehead, laying on my back in the bed with the blankets covering me. I blinked up at Rhonda's worried face staring down at me again and a feeling of Deja-Vu came over me.  
"Why is it always you who comes to my aid?", I asked her, and she smirked while taking the cloth from my head and dabbing it in a bowl of water.  
"Because it's always you who comes to mine, Josey."  
Rhonda smiled weakly, putting the cloth back to my forehead. The cold thing felt like a saving grace to the headache I had, dampening it a little and allowing my thoughts to surface more easily.  
"What happened?", I asked, trying to remember what happened through the fog in my head.  
"I woke to find you on the floor. You must have hit your head because there's a big bump on it. When I asked you about it earlier, you suddenly fainted again. I don't know anything beside that," she offered, and I freed a hand from under the blankets to reach out for hers.  
"Thank you for taking care of me," I sighed with a smile, closing my eyes and falling asleep properly.

It was dark when I woke up again, and found Rhonda snuggled up to my side in the bed again. The smell of soup lingered in the air and I tasted some remnant of it in my mouth.  
I licked around my mouth a little to get the taste out and my saliva production going, while trying to get the shadows in the room in focus and failing miserably at it. I noticed a slight movement in the room and tried to look at it, but something kept me from moving my head.  
An unfamiliar voice whispered something in my ear, but it wasn't in a language I knew. It just sounded like "boshashdemburibiboshbu," or something... I don't know, I was not in the right state of mind to memorize it.  
Somewhere inside I felt that it was all going to be ok, but I don't know why I felt like that. It did help me close my eyes again to sleep, all fears surrounding the shadow or the voice disappearing from my mind. 


	3. Chapter 3

I woke up refreshed in the morning, with Rhonda still clinging to my side, and turned my head to face her. Something moved with my head and I frowned a little at it. When I tried to turn my head to get a better look at it, the darn thing moved with my head again, constantly staying just out of sight!  
I could barely catch a glimpse of a shadow of a thing that looked like I was wearing a baseball cap or something, but not as wide. But I couldn't tell what it was exactly. My movements roused Rhonda, and I turned my attention back to the sleepy girl blinking her eyes open to the morning light.  
"Hey, good morning, Rho-Rho. Did you sleep well?" I asked, my voice sounding a bit raw due to lack of moist in my throat.  
Rhonda stretched herself with a long yawn, which had me yawning with her, but then nodded and looked up at me to answer. Her mouth opened, but instead of words coming out of it, I saw her eyes go wide and her face get pale while her mouth just opened up a little farther.  
"What? What's wrong? Do I have something on my face?" I asked, snapping to full consciousness, and she nodded quickly. "I do? Well, get it off then!" I meeped, and Rhonda quickly shook her head.  
"Rho? What's going on?" Rhonda pointed silently at the mirror above the dresser, and I sighed while moving to pull the blankets off of myself. I swung my legs to the side and put my arms underneath me to push up into a sitting position. "Fine, fine, I'll go look," I muttered.  
With Rhonda still in a state of shock, I pushed up from the bed to walk on over to the dresser. I still felt a little dizzy, and had to put my hands on top of it before I felt stable enough to look up at the mirror suspended above it.  
"I don't see any," I started, not seeing anything out of the ordinary on my face, but stopped mid-sentence as I spotted the protrusion extending about two inches from my forehead.  
It looked like, well, as if there was a bone growing underneath my skin.  
My skin looked stretched out over it. Just my normal skin. Nothing abnormal about my skin, except for how it was sticking out. It looked a bit cone-shaped. A round, cone shaped, protrusion...

"You're growing a horn," I heard Rhonda gasp from the bed, and swallowed at the reality of things.  
I was.  
There was a horn growing out of my forehead!  
I had to stabilize myself against the dresser as I felt my knees grow weak staring at the thing.  
"How is... What... I don't even," I started, dropping to my knees and still staring at my reflection in the mirror. Here I was, a human girl, with a horn protruding from my forehead!  
Rhonda quickly rushed to my side as I fell down, supporting me both physically and emotionally as I felt my tears break when her arms wrapped around me.  
"I don't," I started, then turned toward Rhonda's form and cried without reservation. Rhonda let me. Even if I was parched from having just woken up, from not having had more to drink than whatever Rhonda had fed me during the previous day as I had laid unconscious in the bed, the tears just rolled down my cheeks and dropped onto her shoulder and upper back.  
We sat like that for a few minutes until Rhonda's words started to register in my mind and I slowly started to regain my composure while listening to her babbling into my ear.  
"...maybe a hat or something. I could go wear skirts again, I guess? We'll go through this together. You said so yourself. I'll never leave you, Josey. You've always been there for me and didn't throw me out when you saw my tail. I will help you with finding something to mask this. Cause I love you, you know? You've been my best friend for so long, I wouldn't know what to do without you. I just wish you'd had a tail as well. I don't think we're allowed to wear hats in school."  
I rested my head on her shoulder and squeezed her gently. "Rho and Jo forever," I muttered through the tears, and Rhonda leaned her head sideways against mine and repeated the last word.  
"Forever."

"Forever is a long time, you know?" Discord's voice sounded in the room, and both Rhonda and me looked up and around ourselves to try and find where the words came.  
It took us both a moment, but then Rhonda gasped and pointed to a poster on my wall. The poster featured the actor John Barrowman in his role as Captain Jack Harkness, wearing a military overcoat. He looked quite the imposing figure, if not for the Draconequus curled around the man's shoulders like a boa.  
Discord looked far too real to be there, and his movements, while the rest of the sun-bleached poster remained stationary, was enough to cause a feeling of unease in the both of us.  
He didn't look like how he was depicted in the show at all. Well, he did, goatee and all, but he didn't look drawn. His head looked like a real goat's head. His claws like real claws. His scaled tail like real scales. They shined in the light coming in from the window as if he was really there in the room with us. As a two-dimensional representation of himself simply projected onto the poster.  
Except he wasn't projected onto the poster. He really hung over Captain Jack's shoulders. His body disappeared where it went around behind the man's neck. He even had the tip of his tail tucked into Jack's overcoat, the dragon talons of his right leg disappearing under a lapel of it.  
He seemed to bask in the attention that we gave him as our minds tried to come to terms with what we were seeing. His bird-like claw was stroking his goatee slowly while he was waiting for us to make the next move.  
"You're not real," Rhonda finally breathed out, and I shook my head to it as well.  
"I'm not?" Discord returned, mockingly pretending to be hurt at her statement. "Maybe you would listen to me better if," he stated, disappearing from the poster and suddenly appearing on the television - which was turned OFF - and continuing, "I was here instead? A media personality coming to you live from Equestria?"  
We turned our heads to follow the sounds and Rhonda shivered. I pulled her a little closer against me and frowned at Discord on the television leaning against one of the edges of the screen as he proceeded to do stretch exercises.  
"Is this your doing?" I bit to him, pointing up to my forehead.

Discord stopped doing exercises and moved his head closer to mine to inspect my horn. It was a really strange effect to see his body in the television but his head mere inches away from mine.  
It was like watching a 3D movie but the effect was accompanied by a feeling of unease worse than any movie I'd seen before then.  
"Why, you seem to be growing a horn. How quaint," he remarked, and I felt the urge to punch him. "No, that's not me. That's you and you alone."  
Discord smiled and pulled himself back into the television with a sucking sound that only added to the uneasiness. It sounded somewhat like the sound wet dog food makes as it drops out of the can, but played in reverse.  
"Well, maybe you did have a little help. You see, we have a small problem which has regrettably galloped off into this world," Discord continued, and Rhonda and me shared a glance between us.  
"What kind of a problem?" I asked, seeming more up to the task to talking with a fictional character than Rhonda was at the time.  
"Well, one of my, ahem, students... has gone rogue," Discord admitted with a flush, seeming genuinely embarrassed for just a brief moment. It didn't take long before he reasserted himself as the king of chaos however, and he returned to smiling enigmatically toward us.  
"She's got the weird little idea in her head that Earth should become the new Equestria since it has so much more room than we have in this little box here," he offered, growing in size on the screen until he had to fold himself up just to fit within its borders. "See how cramped it is?"  
I sighed, then mumbled under my breath, "I wonder who gave her that idea."  
Discord fell out of the television screen and onto the table my television was set up on, falling flat on his back and gripping at his chest.  
"Oh. OH! I'm HURT that you think I had anything to do with it!" he decried, then got up to sit on the edge of the table staring at us, one leg hooked over the other and his arms folded in front of him.  
"Now look here, I do love a bit of chaos now and again. But Fluttershy opened my eyes to the concept of moderation. If Earth succumbs to this filly's magical tricks, it will offset the balance in a way that goes beyond chaos. There are things out there that are far, far worse than I could ever be," he revealed, his eyes narrowing at us.  
"The more she destabilizes this dimension, the more they're drawn to Earth to destroy everything and everyone within it. And how can I play with this dimension when there's nothing left in it? Hmm? You tell me that."

I stared at him, flabbergasted at his sudden candor. Rhonda was the first to snap out of it and pushed herself up from the ground to approach Discord.  
"Rho?" I tried, but she made a motion with her left hand that silenced me again.  
"I have a tail," Rhonda started, as Discord just peered up at her in mild amusement.  
"So have I, aren't they great?" Discord replied with a grin, flicking his tail behind him.  
"Josey has a horn growing out of her forehead," Rhonda continued, and Discord reached up to his own horns.  
"Oh, just wait until the skin breaks. Fever dreams are so wonderfully chaotic," he offered to me, looking past Rhonda and almost missing the movement of her hand until it was too late.  
Just as I thought she was going to hit him, he disappeared in a flash and appeared life size beside me in the middle of the room. "Now that wasn't very friendly," he huffed as Rhonda's attempt to slap him ended in her moving her hand through empty space.  
She let out a frustrated sigh and turned to face Discord again, her eyes glaring at him with barely held-back anger.  
"To be fair, I don't think either of us is very happy with what happened. First she grows a tail, then I grow a horn, and then you drop in and... what? What do you expect of us? Why do you explain these things to us?" I asked, feeling my own anger rise at Discord's continued games.  
Discord knelt down beside me and reached out to tap my horn once with his bird-like talon. "Because your magic potential is the highest of all her victims so far."  
I winced at the pain shooting through my head, then looked up in confusion once it settled. "What does that even mean?"

"There's no magic in this world," Rhonda stated, joining me by my side again and helping me stand up so we were both at Discord's eye-level.  
Discord smirked at her statement and placed his feline hand on her left shoulder.  
"Au contraire! It has always been here. And some of you have been using it. But now this filly is unlocking it at a faster rate than it gets used and is drawing the wrong kind of attention to herself. Zecora came to check up on you yesterday, as she has with all of this filly's victims. All the princesses are hard at work to find a solution for this problem. So, they sent me, her teacher, to come explain things and, well... take you to Equestria."  
He moved his paw from Rhonda's shoulder and waved it toward the center of the room, a portal appearing there as he did. The shimmering oval showed a colorful landscape behind it, with the white walls of Canterlot not too far away.  
Rhonda clung to my side and shivered uncontrollably, and I looked down at her to see her face wrought with fear. "You can't make us," I told Discord, pulling Rhonda closer and letting her hide her face against me. "I'm not going unless Rhonda's going and you can see how she's feeling about the idea."  
Discord smirked at us both, then stuck his head into the portal and looked around to the left and right before pulling it out again. "I will be right back," he stated, disappearing in a flash and leaving the portal there in the middle of the room.  
I helped Rhonda shuffle over to the bed and sat us down on it, pulling her close and just softly stroking her back. "It's ok, ssh... it's ok," I cooed to her, but I wasn't too sure myself. I had to keep up appearances for Rhonda's sake though. I had to be the strong one. All those panicky thoughts could wait until after Rhonda calmed down. 


	4. Chapter 4

We didn't have long to wait before Discord's voice started drifting into the room from the other side of the portal, sounding as distorted as the shimmering of the world we saw through it. It sounded like he was approaching it from the other side, but he was nowhere that I could see.  
"...have to explain it to them. I'm not getting anywhere. Rainbow sorbet?"  
Another voice replied, sounding almost an octave lower than Discord's, "No thank you, I had a big lunch."  
"Suit yourself," Discord continued as he stuck his head around the left side of the portal - right into the room - and looked around to find us.  
"Ah, there they are. I'll leave this to you then," he spoke to his unseen company, and pulled his head back. "Are you sure you don't want one?", he asked to someone to his left, but then shrugged at them repeating their earlier sentence and started walked off toward the walls in the distance, holding a sorbet that looked to be made of rainbows in his clawed hand.  
I looked down at Rhonda who was still shivering in fear, but as Discord moved away she seemed to shiver a little less so. I wondered at the significance of that and totally missed the stallion stepping into the room until he stood right in front of us.  
His coat was blue. Blue like the kind of blue you find at the bottom of swimming pools. His mauve eyes were staring up at us and his unicorn horn was so close to us that, if I would have reached out toward it, I could have touched it without stretching my arm out fully.  
He was standing on all four hooves and he barely reached four feet from his hooves to his mane. The term 'little pony' really applied to him. His light purple mane had been combed back and looked like it took a lot of grease to keep it there, and his tail flicked idly behind him.  
I couldn't see his cutiemark until later, but it was a quill on an open roll of parchment. He cleared his throat at my scrutinizing gaze and raised an eyebrow at me. "Do I have something on my face?"

I didn't know if I had to laugh or cry at that, and ended up doing both. "Yes you do!" I exclaimed, "And so do I!" I continued, and Rhonda peered up in confusion, her panic spell broken from my sudden eruption.  
"Oh gods. This is so... so crazy," I sniffled in-between giggles, trying to calm down again. "So crazy. This. I don't even," I stumbled, ending up crying more than I was laughing and just staring at the colt's horn.  
"How, er," I tried, wiping a bit more at my eyes while calming down again.  
"You both have horns," Rhonda stated the obvious, and sent me back into a giggle fit.  
"They're quite common for unicorns to have, yes," the stallion offered. "I'm Magic Ink. You can call me Magic, or Ink. Either works. As long as you don't call me Mink."  
I just couldn't stop myself laughing from the absurdity of it all until I suddenly felt Rhonda's hand impact with my right cheek in rather a painful way. "Snap out of it, Josey! You're being hysterical!"  
I reached up to feel at my burning cheek and stared up at her in shock. "I... I'm sorry?" I offered, but Rhonda already moved on to kneeling beside Magic Ink and smiled at him.  
"It's nice to meet you, sir," she offered, making the pony blush lightly.  
"Oh, I'm not a sir. Just Magic or Ink would work? Ink would be shorter," the pony responded in an awkward fashion.  
"I usually spend my time in the archives, but now with everypony so riled up about this situation, I guess mister Discord couldn't find anypony else to help you two out? Er, I mean, it's nice to meet you two as well, misses Rho and Jo?"  
"Rhonda and Josey," I corrected him, still rubbing at my cheek. "Is there any way to get out of this with our sanity intact? Because if my cheek wasn't hurting so badly I would be thinking this was all a dream."  
"I'm very sorry, miss Josey," Magic apologized at my correction. "Mister Discord is the one who told me your names."  
I smirked at this as I had half expected that to be the case.

"If it was a dream, you'd be talking with Princess Luna, miss. Not to me," Magic offered in response, and took a step away from Rhonda who had leaned in to look at his tail. "Er, I don't know what your local customs are, but could you not do that please?"  
Rhonda pulled away as well, blushing fiercely as she moved to my side again.  
"She's grown a tail of her own in the past week," I explained to the pony. "I think she just wanted to see the difference between hers and yours. Look, I know Discord said we are to come with to Equestria and all, but can we get dressed first please? We're still in our nightclothes."  
Ink looked between us a moment, unsure of what I meant, and I realized the concept of nudity being an embarrassing thing was unfamiliar to him.  
"Humans don't usually show themselves naked to others," I tried. "We don't have fur to cover us?"  
Ink stared blankly at my further explanation, but then his ears suddenly perked up and he took another step back, right into a chair that fell over with a loud sound!  
"Oh! I didn't... I don't usually... Oh, I'm so sorry! Let me, er... I will just be on the other side of the portal then. I won't look!" he quickly decided, galloping through the portal and moving to stand in front of it on the other side with his eyes facing away.  
"Ah, Ink?" I called out after him.  
"Yes miss?" came the reply.  
"Do you think being in Equestria may speed up whatever's happening to us? Because if there's any other changes we're going to look forward to, we may not want to put on too tight-fitting clothes?", I asked, "I mean, Discord did say that someone is trying to make the earth into a new Equestria, and suddenly we have pony stuff growing on us. What's the end result?"  
"Er... none of the old texts said anything about Equestria speeding up anything, but the spell she stole was created to make a pony out of something else, yes. You're most likely going to be like us if we can't stop its effects," he returned.

I sighed and looked at Rhonda, who looked back with big eyes filled with fear. "That's what I feared ever since Discord showed his face. Ok, easy-to-dispose of clothes it is."  
"Halloween last year?", Rhonda quipped, and I winced at that.  
"I'm not going to walk around Equestria looking like a pirate."  
"I thought you looked cute," Rhonda replied with a shrug, trying to keep her fear down while focusing on getting us some clothes.  
"Are you sure we're not a couple?", I sighed, walking over to the dresser and pulling out the brush, a pair of scissors, some needle and thread and the first-aid kit.  
"Rho-Rho? If the skin breaks," I started, putting everything in a shoulder bag and putting it aside as I joined Rhonda near the bed, looking at what she'd put out for me to wear.  
"I'll be there to help you through it," she offered with a weak smile, looking at my horn with a bit of trepidation.  
A pair of baggy pants, a baggy shirt, and some walking shoes without laces later and we were ready to head into Equestria. I grabbed the bag, slung it over my shoulder, and joined hands with Rhonda as we stepped in front of the portal.  
"We're ready, Ink. Unless you want us to step on your tail, you may want to move out of the way," I joked, and Rhonda looked up with a frown.  
"Don't joke about that. You don't know what it feels like to have those hairs pulled," she muttered.  
Ink moved out to the side and looked in our direction. "Just step through. It won't hurt you."  
Rhonda and I didn't move. We just held hands and looked at one another, steeling ourselves for what was to come. And it was in that moment that I realized how deep our relationship had grown. How much I needed her.  
And I saw it in her eyes as well. A shimmer of a tear growing in the corner of her eye. I reached up and wiped it away with my thumb. "Rho?"  
"Yes?", she said, her voice laced with emotion.  
"Forever," I told her and smiled as she nodded softly in reply.  
"I'll never leave your side," she almost whispered as her tears started to roll.  
"I'll never leave you alone. My Rho," I promised, and pulled her to me.  
It wasn't until she clung to my chest that I took the step that sent us both through the portal and into Equestria. 


	5. Chapter 5

The feeling of passing through the portal was a little bit like stepping into a store that has a large heater hanging above the entrance; A waft of warm air that washed over us until we realized that it was warmer in Equestria than it had been in my room.  
Still holding onto Rhonda, I looked around and noticed the portal shimmering and disappearing as I looked at it. There was no way back anymore unless someone could make a new one.  
It appeared we were standing in one of Canterlot's gardens, the white walls we had seen in the distance being the outer walls of the capital itself. The inner walls were not two steps away from us and looked as imposing as they probably should, given the castle's position as the seat of government.  
The movement of halberds along the top of the walls, and the clanging of armor from up there, clearly indicated Celestia's guards were moving around just out of sight from us. Fierce ponies doing important work. I was feeling a little awestruck at it all.  
"You arrived just as the guards are changing," Ink explained, following my gaze, while Rhonda slowly detached from me and reached behind her to feel over the area where her pants were hiding her tail.  
"Something wrong, Rho?", I asked, already digging into my bag.  
"It's tingling," she answered, but meeped as I produced a pair of scissors, "Don't cut it off!"  
I stared at her with a dumbfounded expression. "Now why would I do that? I was planning to make a hole in your pants so your tail could be free to swing about."  
"Oh," Rhonda replied, biting her lower lip in embarrassment.  
I moved toward her with the scissors and carefully cut a hole out of the back of it, then reached in with my fingers to pull her long tail hairs out in small bundles.  
To my surprise I could see them grow as they came out of the pants and by the time all of them were out they were already hanging down to her knees.

"You may want to write this into the archives, Ink; Hairs do grow faster here than they do on Earth," I chuckled weakly, putting the patch of cloth and the scissors back into my back. "Let's hope unicorn horns don't," I sighed, moving my eyes in an attempt to stare up at the thing.  
"Well, hm... Let me take you to the guest wing of the palace then. Princess Twilight and her friends left for the Crystal Empire to confer with Princess Cadance, so the rooms should be empty," Ink decided, and moved to lead the way.  
I pulled Rhonda to my side and smiled at her. "We only need one room anyway. But let's. That way, if I end up fainting again, we'll have a bed I can collapse onto," I sighed. "Like I did yesterday."  
Rhonda looked around at the colors surrounding us while we followed behind the blue stallion. Where Discord had looked a bit too real for comfort on Earth, this trend continued in Equestria; The colors were more vibrant, and there were more of them than in most places on Earth, but it all looked too real.  
The stone was real stone. It looked like real stone. I was afraid if I touched the pristine white walls I would smudge them.  
The grass was real grass. Brighter than that at home, but it looked very real indeed. There were all the slight blemishes in the otherwise unbroken grass field that we had at home. Small weeds trying to grow where they shouldn't, little flowers and other plants poking their heads up above the grass shoots. It had looked a lot more uniform on the television than it did in reality.  
Heh, reality. "You're sure we're not dreaming, right? This is real, right?", I asked of Magic Ink as we headed for an opening in the inner walls. A long flight of steps was waiting there for us to climb it and two white-coated stallions in armor were standing guard on either side.  
"If only it was a dream," he sighed, nodding to the guards as he passed them. I noticed their glances at us, but they didn't stop us.  
"We must look so odd to all you ponies," Rhonda giggled softly.  
"There are records of humans having visited our world before, miss Rhonda," Ink offered, "But we haven't seen one here in centuries. Or none that still resembled their old selves, that is. There are records of ponies who were formerly human, or even of ponies disappearing from our world and being found again on Earth. Some ponies have claimed the barriers between our worlds are growing weaker every day. There are even some that claim Equestria and Earth were once the same place. And it's that dangerous assumption that is giving us so much trouble right now."  
"You mean Equestria could have been a place on Earth?", I wondered, trying to keep up with what Magic was saying.  
"Or Earth a place in Equestria. Both are possible," Ink mused with a light smile, looking back and stopping dead in his tracks. "Miss Rhonda, your mane!"

I looked at Rhonda as well and noticed her beautiful brown hair was changing color. "Oh dear. Rho, your hair is turning pink!"  
Rhonda went pale and flailed her arms at the pony before us. "Quick! A mirror!"  
"This way!" Magic exclaimed, galloping ahead with Rhonda not far behind.  
I found myself watching them run off before I realized I had to follow them! I tried to set my legs in motion, but every step I took felt like a chore, causing me to follow at a slower speed than intended. A great feeling of exhaustion and despair fell over me and I barely managed to make it up the steps before I had to sit down to catch my breath.  
I stumbled to the left of the stairway, dropping heavily onto the edge of the nearest wall. My mind was in turmoil, going over the events of the previous days and trying to make sense of it all.  
I looked up in time to see Rhonda and Ink disappear into the main building just ahead of the stairway, unknowing of my inability to follow directly behind. I turned my head in the opposite direction and found myself looking out over the lands of Equestria.  
There was a train moving through the land, smoke wafting up from it as it took its passengers where they wanted to go. Lakes, forests, fields of grass, the occasional city here or there. I idly wondered where Ponyville was.  
A guard moved up to me and looked out over the lands as well. "Are you ok, miss?", he asked casually, and I looked over to him.  
"Isn't it strange to see a human here?", I asked instead of answering him.  
The Guard set his forehooves up on the wall beside me and stretched himself a little, looking down at the lower plateau. "Not as strange as you would think, miss. The Princess has a lot of visitors. Not all from this realm. I will always remember the Changeling invasion. Captain... I mean, Prince Shining Armor kept us up day and night guarding this place. Compared to those pests, you're a welcomed guest."  
I chuckled at that. "Back where I'm from those tales are told as a form of entertainment, sir guard."  
"It does make for a good story to tell one's grandfoals, yes," he offered. "Be careful not to fall. It's a long way down."  
"Thank you, I will. By the way, would you know which town out there is Ponyville?" I asked, waving my hand toward the towns in the distance.  
"I think Ponyville is on the other side of the palace, miss. But I wouldn't know. You could ask lady Zecora if you see her? She's roaming around the palace grounds somewhere," he replied with a shrug. "If there's nothing else I can do for you, miss, I'll be returning to my rounds now? Have a good day."

I nodded and felt a little dizzy as I did. "Thank you. I think I'll find Magic Ink and see about that guest room he was talking about. I'm starting to feel a little dizzy," I returned, and stood up from where I was sitting, starting off toward the main building.  
I was surprised to find the guard moving to my side after only a few paces and only then noticed I wasn't walking in a straight line. "Please lean on me, miss. I'll take you to the guest rooms," he suggested, looking up with concern on his face.  
With my right hand resting on the guard's flank to stabilize myself, we made it to the guest room where Rhonda was sitting in front of a mirror watching the last few strands of her formerly brown mane turn pink.  
I sank onto the bed and moved to lay on my back when I felt the muscles in my lower back contract. It was only a small spasm, but the tingling that followed lingered and I didn't even have to look to know I was starting to grow a tail as well.  
"Rho? I don't feel too good. I'm going to lay down a bit," I exhumed tiredly, "Can you get the scissors out to cut a hole in my pants please?"  
Rhonda turned away from the mirror with a blank look on her face and nodded. "Your tail came out too, didn't it?"  
"It's starting to, yes... but my headache is getting worse and I'm feeling dizzy," I replied, turning over on my right side to have my back exposed toward the edge of the bed. "It feels like my horn's growing as well."  
"Fascinating," Magic Ink breathed out, producing a small notepad and scribbling some things down.  
"Glad to hear you're having fun," I groaned, and he blushed as he looked away.  
Rhonda took the bag from me and pulled out the scissors, then knelt beside the bed and I felt her tugging on my pants as she started to cut into them.  
"He's just doing his job, Jo," she muttered, then pulled my pants down a little and pushed my shirt up. "Yours are green."  
"Eh?"  
"Your tail is green," Rhonda remarked, and suddenly I felt a sharp sting where my tail would have been. "Sorry for that. Here, look," she said, offering me a small green hair which she held between her thumb and index finger.  
I groaned and swatted it away with a hand. "Could've waited until my mane changed color?", I snapped, but then had to squeeze my eyes closed from the pain radiating from my horn.  
"Is there a thing like aspirin here? Anything to keep this headache down?" I asked of Magic Ink, and he nodded.  
"Miss Zecora has a lot of potions for that. I'll go get one for you," he offered, and ran out the door.  
"You hear that, RhoRho? Zecora has potions for that. If we have to deal with that rhyming zebra, will you please shoot me?", I sighed, my head feeling far from wanting to deal with rhymes of any kind.  
"You'll be ok, Josey. I'm here with you. Forever," Rhonda offered, gently helping my growing tail hairs out through the hole in my pants while leaning her head against me.  
The gentle strokes of her hands on my tail, while soothing, were not enough to keep the pain and dizziness from getting worse, and soon I had to close my eyes as the room started to swerve and sway around me in an increasingly chaotic manner.  
It didn't take long before I was lost to the fever dreams. 


	6. Chapter 6

"Blond hairs turn green if you use too much bleach, you know?", the cookie offered as he lazed in the hot batter springs beside me and a pancake holding onto a spoon. "You don't need to be a rocket scientist to tie your shoelaces, but it helps."  
I agreed with a nod that made the world around me shimmer and get replaced by an endless desert. A scarecrow was swatting at a vulture sitting on top of a large cactus plant with a face cut into it.  
"Do you know the way to Tipperary?" the cactus asked, as if it was the most normal thing to do, and I stumbled sideways into a wall of ice cream.  
"There's only so much fun one can have sliding down a slope. Why not slide up it?", Discord's voice called out, and I saw him ice-skating up a vertical slope.  
"Didn't I tell you fever dreams are amazingly fun?" he asked with a wink, but then I fell backward into a tub of red gelatin. The taste of strawberries hit me and I felt panic rise up.  
I had to swim! I would drown if I wasn't swimming! I flailed my arms around and hit something that shouted "OUCH!"  
I sat up straight in bed and looked around me at the things surrounding me. It was so NORMAL! There were no talking cookies! "WHERE ARE THE TALKING COOKIES?!", I demanded, while blood leaked down from my forehead into my eyes.  
A pink-haired girl with one eye looking bigger than the other moved into view, her one hand rubbing at her face while the other started to push me back.  
"NO! You can't make me drown in the gelatin tub!" I exclaimed in fear and panic, but as I fell backward I saw the world around me starting to spin until the ride stopped and everyone climbed out of the teacups to go to the other rides in the park.  
I had a biiiiig fluffy ball of cotton candy in my hands and they were sticking to everything! I was trying to get out of the ride, really I was. But the cotton candy spider wouldn't let me. She was weaving me into the teacup web and then the world started to spin again spinning around and around and around.  
And then it stopped and something started to push everything away. I was all alone. Just a little child sitting on a black plane. Nothing around me for miles. The floor wasn't even really there. It was just a black plane without form or definable surface.  
But from the darkness a pair of eyes started to form, and then the shape of a horse followed behind. The stars came out around her, spreading out through the sky, and the plane I was sitting on became a comfortable bed.  
"Calm down, little Josey," Princess Luna cooed, sitting down beside me and using a wing to pull me closer to her. "Let us sit and watch the stars. You're doing very good. You just have to hold on for a little longer. Do you understand?"  
I nodded and pressed my small form to the side of the big pony lady, smiling up at her as her wing folded around me to protect me from the scary things. She had a calming aura around her. I liked her. It was easy to calm down and just lay against her and fall asleep and know no fear.

I woke up to the sounds of talking in the room. Rhonda lay on the bed beside me, half covered by the bloodstained sheets. I stirred in shock as I noticed them, but then felt a dark wing drape over me and felt peace return to my mind.  
I slowly turned to see Luna standing beside the bed, a wing casually draped over me while she was talking to her sister Celestia. I wasn't fully awake yet and only got shards of their conversation. Nothing I could make sense of.  
Instead of focusing on them talking, I looked up at the big thing poking out of my head. I knew it was a horn. It was a big one too. It stuck out of my head several inches to the point where I could actually see the tip of it if I looked up.  
Ten inches at least. Thin and wiry and looking a bit like mint canes with the dried-up blood still in the dimples of the otherwise white object. I blinked my eyes at it a few times, then reached up to touch it but was stopped by Luna moving her wing up as well.  
"You don't want to touch your horn just yet, little Josey. Give it some time to settle," she spoke to me directly, and I turned my weary eyes in her direction.  
"You've been in and out of your fever dreams for the entire night. Rhonda wouldn't leave your side. Celestia and I have been taking turns watching over you as well. It is not often that we see a true princess being born."  
"A princess?", I wondered.  
Luna nodded toward my horn. "It is as long as our own."  
Celestia joined her side and smiled lightly. "Zecora said you had magic potential, but to find one of our own among you humans is a rare gift indeed."  
I felt my cheeks burn at all that, but didn't really know what to say, so I looked off to my side instead. A lock of green hair fell over my eyes and I absentmindedly blew it out of my face before realizing what it meant. "My.. my mane!"  
"It was an interesting sight to see, miss Josey," Magic Ink offered. "The process was very gradual, quite similar to what happened with miss Rhonda's mane."  
I stared at the blue pony on the other side of the bed, still with the notepad and quill floating in front of him and watched him scrape a hoof over the floor in an uneasy manner before he walked over to hide behind Celestia.  
I then looked up at the sisters Celestia and Luna and reached a hand up again. Luna moved to stop me with her wing, but I moved my arm around it and rubbed at the side of my head, taking her note of leaving my horn alone for now for good advice.  
"I have no idea what all happened. I think I ate a cookie with Discord or something. I wake up with this bump sticking out of my head one morning, and the next I know we're whisked away to Equestria to do... what? I don't even know what is expected of us."

Celestia and Luna shared a look between them, then looked back at me and Celestia took a step closer to the bed. "This situation is new to us as well. It has been hinted at in the archives for thousands of years, but to have somepony go out and try to prove it is... unheard of. We sent Twilight Sparkle out to the library in the Crystal Empire in the hopes there are any records there that were lost in time when the empire got sealed away, but we're unsure if there is anything to help us with this. Zecora tries to slow down the growth of Spritelight's magic on Earth, but it's a losing battle. The more humans that get affected by it, the faster they change. Discord has been keeping an eye on Earth and said we've got a little over two-hundred cases already. Most of which are bronies."  
I just stared up blankly at that. "We're pegasisters," I offered, reaching sideways to lightly brush my hand through Rhonda's mane.  
"We are still learning the right terminology," Celestia replied with a smirk. "What Discord has found is both discouraging as well as remarkable. Most of the affected humans are hiding their newfound changes from the rest of the world or are using little tricks to make them seem like a new fashion style. It's actually catching on to those that aren't affected yet. Discord tries his best to keep the two separate and only send Zecora to the affected ones, but it's proving difficult. Zecora has already visited several people that were not yet changing."  
"So... what you're saying is that people are turning into ponies and they're ok with it?", I wondered, not sure what to think of it all.  
"It's more that they're treating it like a fad, Jo," Rhonda muttered, crawling up a bit closer to my side and resting her head against my bosom. "You bled a lot... I did what I could to stop the bleeding but it just wouldn't stop. I was so worried."  
I looked down at her and gently stroked my hand through her mane. "I'm.. feeling ok? I could use a drink, but I don't have a headache anymore? It's just a little strange.. the weight of the thing," I pondered, moving my head about a little and feeling my horn swish through the air as I did. "It's not heavy, but it's.."  
"Awkward?", both Celestia and Luna offered at the same time, and we all giggled a little at that.  
"Yeah.. it feels weird to move it around. I'm not used to it," I decided with a shrug.  
"Hm.. I remember when we were just young foals. I kept popping the balloons at our birthday party by looking around myself," Celestia chuckled. "It'll grow on you. Just give it a few centuries."

Luna frowned at that. "It doesn't really take that long. Just look at Twilight," she remarked, and Celestia turned her head to face her sister's, the tips of their horns barely missing one another as she did.  
"Twilight was a good student. I expected nothing less," Celestia stated, beaming proudly at that. "Cadance had more trouble with it."  
"You don't just turn a Pegasus into an Alicorn. I could have told you that, dear sister," Luna snorted, shaking her head a little. "If I hadn't been stuck in the moon at the time, she would've still been a Pegasus."  
"And we would have Sombra in charge of the Crystal Empire, dearest sister," Celestia retorted, to which Luna blushed and looked away.  
"Er.. excuse me.. are we still in the conversation?" I quipped, blinking between the two a bit.  
"Since when was Cadance a Pegasus?", Rhonda asked with a frown.  
"They're all yours, big sis." Luna grinned, stepping away and looking out of the window. "It is daytime, after all. I will come back when night falls."  
"Very mature," Celestia chuckled, giving a nod to her younger sister. "See you tonight, dear sister."  
Luna bowed to us and then stepped out of the door, spreading her wings and taking to the air. Magic Ink had to close the door behind her.  
Celestia then turned to us and smiled weakly. "When I first met Cadance her loving heart had helped a poor deluded pony see the error of their ways. Missing my sister Luna and finding the Pegasus had no family but the Earth ponies that adopted her, I decided to adopt her as my royal niece and gave her the gift of being an Alicorn."  
Rhonda nodded at that. "Like with Twilight?"  
"Oh no," Celestia offered with a smile, sinking through her hooves so we wouldn't have to look up at her too much. "Twilight did that all on her own. I just helped guide her to her destiny."

"So what's going to happen to me?" I asked, not getting much help from those explanations.  
Celestia sighed and looked a bit more solemn. "Your bodies will adjust to become like ours. Rhonda's horn would have started to grow already if she were a Unicorn. Unless she starts sprouting wings soon, she will become an Earth pony. In your case, Josey, your wings will start to sprout soon. And I'm sorry to say that Spritelight's magic seems to enjoy hurting you.. We will do everything in our power to keep you from going through another fever like that."  
"Oh, joy," I sighed, while Rhonda clung to me a bit tighter. "Any idea when that will happen?"  
Celestia shook her head. "Magic Ink here is keeping track of your progress so we can help others like you if it ever happens again. But you're the first ponies we felt we could bring to Canterlot. Your magic potential combined with the love you two feel for one another reminds me of Cadance and Shining Armor."  
"We're not a couple, though," I protested, but Rhonda poked me immediately after I said so and looked up with her puppy eyes.  
"Or.. maybe we are," I corrected myself at seeing her, and she broke into a smile which could have raised the sun if Celestia hadn't done it already. I had to chuckle at it and reached down to gently pet the top of her head.  
Celestia just watched us with a smile on her face. "As I said, you two are special."  
"Is this allowed, though? In Equestria?", I wondered, looking back up at the princess. "I mean, we're both girls.. Or fillies.. or mares.. or how you want to call us. There are some people on Earth who are very opposed to our kind of relationship."  
Celestia frowned at that. "It is impossible to put restraints on love, Josey. Anypony who would try such is deluding themselves. As Chrysalis found out; true love will always find a way to break through any restriction."  
Rhonda nodded at that. "Josey and me have known each other for years and years now. We're never going to be apart. Rho and Jo forever, right Jo?"  
I smiled down and just continued petting my sweet.. well.. girlfriend. "Forever, Rho. I will never leave you alone."

"Forever is a long time, you know?", Discord offered, sticking his head in the room. "Hello Celestia, how are the kids?", the Draconequus wondered, sauntering into the room as if he owned the place.  
"The kids?", Rhonda meeped, clinging a bit tighter to me.  
"Why, you of course. It's such a precious sight seeing you two grow up to become proper ponies," Discord spoke with a wink in our direction. "I had a lovely time ice skating, by the way. Thank you for dreaming up that mountain," he offered to me in particular, then sat down on Magic Ink's back. "Is this seat taken?"  
"Discord..." Celestia sighed, standing up and walking over. "What did we tell you about using ponies as chairs?"  
"That they weren't as comfortable as they should be?", Discord grinned, but got up regardless. "So this is where I give him a cloud sorbet?"  
"What is it with you and sorbets?", I cut in, "Didn't you already offer him a rainbow sorbet when you made the portal in my room?"  
"Ooh, she's witty," Discord gasped in amusement, snaking past Celestia and holding out a pair of rainbow-colored sorbets to Rhonda and myself.  
"Er.. no, thank you. I saw how Pinkie Pie reacted when she had a taste of rainbow.. that stuff is a little too spicy for my tastes," I offered, warding it off with my free hand while keeping Rhonda nice and close with my other. "And I don't think Rhonda trusts you," I sighed, looking down at her while she tried to hide away from him.  
"Suit yourself. More for me," Discord giggled, putting one sorbet on top of the other and taking a bite out of the upside-down glass bowl covering the top one.  
"Discord! Was there anything you wanted to say?" Celestia demanded.  
"Fine, fine, be boring like that. I found another couple of affected humans. That brings the total to," he looked over to the side where a large sign appeared with "This many humans turned into ponies:" with a digital counter underneath quickly counting up from zero. As the counter hit 255 the numbers started to blink and confetti cannons shot colorful snippets of paper up in the air to fall around us. "Two-hundred and fifty-five humans!", Discord exclaimed like a television show host, taking on a very dramatic pose.  
The room got quiet as everypony in it just stared at him until he finally straightened his back, patted himself down, and made the counter and confetti disappear with a snap of his fingers. "You're all boring," he huffed, then disappeared himself with a flash.

"I don't even," I started, shaking my head a little while Rhonda dared to let go of me a little more.  
"He tries to be good, but it is difficult for him to control his urges," Celestia smirked, then looked towards Magic Ink. "Got that? 2-5-5. Let's send a message to Zecora in case Discord conveniently forgets to fill her in. And while you're out there, have a bath prepared. Josey and Rhonda look like they could use one."  
The blue stallion nodded at receiving his orders and galloped off while Celestia approached us again. "That said, you dears may want to get out of bed so we can have housekeeping clean the sheets. And to be on the safe side, I'll have a guard keep tabs on you at all times until your wings sprout. We don't want you falling off of the walls before you learned how to fly, do we?"  
"Yeah.. that would be bad," I agreed, helping Rhonda sit up before pulling the sheets off of me. "It does look like a lot of blood for something that grew out of my forehead, though.. I mean.. I don't feel lightheaded or anything? I would have expected at least that much?", I offered, moving my head around a little bit to see if the dizzy spells would come back, but they didn't.  
"It's a magical horn. The blood did not so much come from your body as from the manifestation of your horn appearing," Celestia explained. "It's purely because of Spritelight's magic that this happened. She used a very old scroll from before the pony factions joined together. I think it is known as blood magic? It is a long lost dark art. We rarely speak of it."  
"Is it the kind of magic Sombra was using when he was in charge of the Crystal Empire, princess?", I wondered, pushing up out of bed and noticing how tall Celestia really was.  
I mean, she had looked tall both in the show as well as when I was laying in bed, but standing up.. she still towered over me. I was just five foot, four inches myself. The princess took a foot or two on top of that.  
"I didn't realize," I gasped, reaching out with my hand towards her face. "You're as big as the horses on Earth."  
Celestia allowed me to touch the side of her muzzle and smiled down at me. "Rhonda said the same thing, but no. Sombra's magic wasn't blood magic. True, it was very dark magic, but if it had been blood magic not even Luna and me would have been able to stop him."  
"So we're dealing with magic that you and Luna can't handle by yourself? And what about the Elements of Harmony? Or Twilight's own magic? Or a combination of them all?", I inquired, trying to figure out why something was not done about it already.  
"Calm down, dear," Celestia offered with a warm smile, "there's ample time for questions when your transformations are complete. Why don't you two take a bath first and join me for lunch in the great hall?"  
I looked back towards Rhonda who was climbing off of the bed as if she had trouble finding her footing. "A bath does sound nice," I mumbled, reaching out a hand to help my girlfriend stabilize herself. "Dizzy?", I asked, but she shook her head at my assumption.  
"Tingly. Like my legs have fallen asleep," Rhonda replied, moving to my side and wrapping her arms around my waist to keep her balance.  
Celestia's eyes narrowed slightly at the answer, but then turned for the door. "Guard? Bring these girls to the bathroom in the East wing and keep watch over them."  
"Erm.. he will be standing outside, right?", Rhonda quipped, and I couldn't suppress a giggle. 


	7. Chapter 7

The bathroom we were led to was just like one would have expected in a palace; marble and lavish decorations were found everywhere and gold accents were the norm rather than the exception.  
The baths themselves were varied, with single-pony baths in their own rooms and multi-pony communal baths of varied shapes and designs in larger rooms.  
All smaller bathrooms were connected to the main room, which held an Olympic-size swimming pool and various benches in niches in-between the entryways.  
The room we ended up in held just two square bathtubs, sunk down halfway into the floor so any pony could easily step over the edges into them, and long and wide enough for them to disappear fully underwater if they felt the need to.  
The room was more sparsely decorated than the main room, but still overwhelmed us as we weren't used to this kind of luxury.  
The guard left us at the door, but we were greeted by a couple of mares who looked not too dissimilar from Ponyville's spa ponies Lotus Blossom and Aloe; Expertly done makeup, smartly polished hooves, well-kept manes and tails, they clearly knew how to keep themselves - and others - looking their best.  
The one thing that set them aside from the spa ponies were their cutiemarks which were a bar of pink soap with a waft of fragrance seen drifting up from it on the blue pony, and a mascara-wand and an eyelash-curler on the pink mare's flank.  
Rhonda seemed a little calmer among mares than she had been with the stallion around, and let the blue-maned pony with the pink coat guide her to a table where her bloodstained clothes were carefully taken from her.  
The pink-maned pony with the blue coat waved a hoof toward a similar table and, following Rhonda's example, I walked over to it to undress myself as well.  
Remembering Luna's warning about the sensitivity of my horn, and not knowing how to get my shirt off without touching it, I decided to start with my pants.  
I hooked my thumbs over the elastic band and moved to pull the pants down in one go, but was immediately stopped by a sharp sting in my lower back before they had dropped even so much as an inch!

"Oh dear, you really should be more careful with your tail," the pony gasped, rushing to my back. She moved to use her hooves to gently help my pants down lower, all the while making sure I didn't pull more hairs out.  
I felt quite embarrassed about the situation, but Rhonda saw the lighter side of things;  
"I told you," she chuckled from the other end of the room, "you got to be careful with your tail, Jo."  
I stuck my tongue out at her and felt my tail flick at doing so. It was a rather odd sensation, feeling muscles in my lower back contract and release that I had not felt before.  
It was somewhat like the contraction of butt cheeks when making certain dance moves (hey, I played DDR in my day!), but a little higher than expected. Plus, I wasn't dancing.  
I looked back at it and it flicked again. It didn't feel like I had much control of it, it was just moving on its own accord.  
The pink-maned pony cut into my thoughts, leaning into my field of vision while looking up at me. "Your shirt, miss?"  
I sighed and looked up at my horn. "I dunno if that's wise.."  
"If you tilt your head down, miss, your horn will point toward the ground and you could let gravity do the rest?", she offered, and I felt a blush creep on my cheeks. I should have come up with that idea myself, but this whole situation had my brain quite occupied already.  
"Ah, thanks," I managed to mutter out, starting to slip my arms out of the shirt's sleeves to bundle it up around my neck for the great escape trick to follow.  
Lowering my head, I glanced sideways toward the pony standing ready to help in case I needed it. "I didn't quite catch your name, miss?"

"It's Cherry, miss," the pink pony offered, gently helping me slide my shirt up over my head.  
Once it slipped passed my ears, we both let go at the same time and the shirt just dropped down to the floor without touching my horn even once.  
"Cherry?", I asked, lifting my head again and pulling my hands up to cover my chest even while I was wearing a bra.  
"Yes miss," Cherry answered, moving in to fold my shirt up neatly. "It's short for Cherry Blossom."  
"And your.. coworker?", I continued, looking over to the blue pony who was helping a naked Rhonda into one of the bathtubs.  
"Sister, miss," Cherry corrected me, putting my folded shirt away. "Her name's Magnolia. May I please have the rest of your clothing?"  
I obliged with the pony's request, slipping out of my underwear and handing them over. They joined the pile of clothes already folded and the pink pony motioned toward the unoccupied tub.  
I looked over towards Rhonda as I approached, and she looked up with one of her eyes a fair amount larger than the other. I frowned at it a little as I put my foot into the bath, but as soon as the warm water slipped up around my leg, I stopped caring about what other changes my girlfriend was going through. They could wait. This was bliss.  
I let out a happy sigh as I climbed in the tub properly and sank down into the water until it came up to my neck, feeling the warm tingles going over my skin. When was the last time I had a proper bath? Several years ago at least.. we only had a shower at our place, and we had lost contact with the uncle and aunt who did have a bath. My last bath must've been in their place.

I slowly sank further down in the water, immersing my head in the warm liquid while the world around me muted. When my horn finally broke the surface and slipped down, I felt the water flow around it as if it had been an arm or a leg, but about twice as sensitive.  
It made me moan in pleasure, air escaping me in a long stream of bubbles, which forced me up again to get my air back.  
Rhonda sounded like she was making small-talk with the pony caring for her, but my ear was filled up with water and I couldn't quite make out what she was saying. It was all a muted buzzing that made little or no sense to me.  
Another voice spoke up, but on my other side, and I turned my head towards Cherry. "Huh? I didn't quite.. my ears are full of water," I explained, and she shook her head at me.  
Why would she say no? It's like she. Oh! Right! I shook my head quickly, feeling the air whish around my horn, but also feeling the water break out of my ears, restoring my hearing again.  
Cherry's head ducked down as my horn passed over her, but she smiled up weakly again once I stopped shaking my head.  
"..and then he put down a portal in the middle of the room," Rhonda explained to Magnolia, and I nodded to myself.  
It was good for her to be able to talk to somepony about this, even if it was a pony who would forget about it all moments after we'd leave out of sheer respect for their clients' privacy. Or so I would guess. I never worked in a spa myself, after all.  
"Thank you, Cherry," I offered to the pony beside me, and watched as she approached with a soft brush in her mouth.  
She put it down on the edge of the tub and smiled up at me. "Until you get your ears, miss, you won't be able to flick them to get the water out. Shall I brush your mane, miss?"  
I smirked at her first statement, reaching up with a hand to feel over my human ears. Of course they would change at some point as well. And, looking at Cherry's ears, they would probably move a little up as well.  
I sank down in the water to allow the pink pony to reach for my hair without having to stretch herself too much, and closed my eyes as I felt the brush make contact with the back of my head. I knew she was holding it in her mouth, but her brush strokes were gentle and expertly weaved through my hair.  
The brush strokes, the warm water, and Rhonda's voice babbling on to my left all helped soothe my worried mind and I ended up drifting on a cloud of contentment.

I don't know how long I was subject to this wonderful feeling, but I woke with a shock when Rhonda let out a shriek!  
"Something's wrong! Oh nononono.. what's going on?", she cried out, and I pushed up in a sitting position in my own tub to look her way.  
"What's happening, RhoRho?", I asked, reaching out towards her with my left hand, but blinking as she turned her face towards me.  
Besides the shock and horror at whatever was happening that she had shrieked at, there were two large eyes on her face that didn't look to fit on it. They were pony eyes. Proper pony eyes, the pupils currently small from her rising fear, which only helped to make the whites of her eyes look that much bigger on her changing face.  
"I can't feel my legs anymore!", Rhonda whined, looking between me and the tub before splashing her face down into the water to look at her limbs.  
I stared at her strange behavior until she came up again with water flowing past her blinking pony eyes. "They're changing," she sniffled, reaching up to rub at her eyes with hands that looked comically small in comparison.  
"Can you lift one up, sweety?", I asked, casting a glance down at my own legs but they were as I expected them to be. 100% Human.  
Rhonda bit her lower lip, then slipped down a little in the water so she could pull her right leg up.  
I stared at it as it changed in front of my eyes; the toes started to merge together, forming a hoof, her foot grew in size while her lower leg seemed to shrink, her former ankle-joint rising up closer to her knee as it did.  
Soon enough she had two fully formed pony legs attached to her hips. There wasn't any fur growing on them yet however, and it only made them look more alien from the human limbs they had once been.  
"You're not feeling any of that?", I asked of Rhonda, and she shook her head.  
I reached up for my horn and dared to finally touch it, letting out a sigh. She went numb, while I got hurt. Life was so unfair!

"Josey, how am I supposed to walk with these?", Rhonda whimpered, and I shook my head softly.  
"We'll work it out together, ok?", I offered, reaching out with my left hand again until she put her right in it and then squeezed it. "But at some point we'll have to get used to walking on all fours."  
Rhonda sighed at that and looked down at our joined hands. "I guess."  
I looked past Rhonda to see Magnolia stand beside her tub, her tail flicking nervously behind her. It made me wonder about the other one and I looked around the room until I spotted Cherry Blossom walk back in from the door leading outside.  
"Hey, I think your sister's a little overwhelmed," I started, and Cherry nodded to me as she moved towards Magnolia to give her a soft nuzzle and whisper something in her ear. Whatever was said, it visibly relaxed the blue pony, and she moved over to a table to get a brush not unlike the one her sister had used on my mane before.  
I squeezed Rhonda's hand again and smiled at her. "Whatever changes, my love for you will remain. You'll never lose me. I promise."  
Rhonda smiled weakly at that and nodded. "I know.. thank you."  
I let go of her hand as Magnolia moved in with the brush and sank back in the tub I was in since Rhonda was no longer in a state of panic.  
As Cherry joined me again, I looked up at her with a concerned frown on my face and motioned towards my eyes. "Did they change yet?"  
The pink pony nodded slowly at that. "One is almost fully changed, the other looks to be halfway there."  
I nodded back at that and sank down further in the bath again. I had not even noticed anything changing in my perception. I looked through one eye, then the other, then the first again, and slowly it dawned on me.  
While my eyes had been growing, giving me a slowly increasing field of vision, the process had been so gradual that my mind would have automatically corrected anything that would have otherwise led to me noticing it. I just accepted it because by the time I noticed the changes, my brain had already accepted them as default.  
I would have facepalmed if I did not have my horn there.. 


	8. Chapter 8

I had asked Cherry Blossom to get me a mirror, and dipped my head and horn underwater while she went to retrieve one. Little trails of blood leaked away from my horn and I let out an occasional set of bubbles until I ran out of air and had to come up.  
The feeling of the water rushing down my horn to then leak down my face was interesting in and of itself, the grooves in my horn working like a kind of water slide which aided the flow of water until it would impact with my forehead. I let out a surprised squeak at the feeling, and Rhonda giggled a little.  
"I'm not the only pone who feels weird, then?", she offered, moving her newly formed pony legs through the water to form waves on the surface of it.  
I stuck out my tongue at her and finally dared to reach up to gently touch my horn's base. It was still sensitive, but the warm water had helped it heal and my fingers playing over it only sent shivers down my back, not pain.  
"I wonder what your coat's color is going to be, RhoRho," I mused, then held my arm up in front of my face and chuckled. "Or mine, for that matter. With your pink hair, I would imagine something like Fluttershy's colors; yellow coat. But with my green?"  
"Why not white for my coat?", Rhonda frowned, and I stared at her.  
"Well, I dunno," I started, "Pink and white.. that makes me think of those nurse ponies."  
"I could be your private nurse pony, princess Josey?", Rhonda winked, and we both giggled a bit.  
"Gods, I never thought I'd end up a princess," I sighed out, still a bit overwhelmed at the idea. "But if Celestia is right, that means my wings would come before my hooves.. and you already have yours.."  
I started to feel a bit uncomfortable at the idea. "Rho.. my horn coming out really really hurt me."  
Rhonda looked down at her hooves as if trying to come up with a response to that, but then suddenly moved her hands up and started to feel over her face. Ah, she finally noticed.  
"What happened to my face?!", she cried out, and I smirked at her.  
"Same thing that's happening to mine, RhoRho," I offered, and Rhonda stared blankly at me as if she had only now seen my eyes change.

"But they're like these big round.. things," Rho breathed out. "How did I not notice it changing before?"  
I looked down at the water in front of me and tried to get a good look at my eyes. "Where's Cherry with that mirror?", I mumbled, the water's reflection showing me only part of what I wanted to see.  
"Josey? What's my eye color? I can't make it out. It looks like pink?", I heard Rhonda say beside me, and looked up and straight in her eyes.  
"Yeah, they're a lighter shade of pink than your mane," I agreed. "I would call it orchid?"  
"My mane," Rhonda tasted the word, then looked back at the water. "Fuchsia mane and tail, orchid eyes.."  
I looked behind me at my tail and pulled the hairs up out of the water. "My hairs are jade, aren't they? What are my eyes like?"  
Rhonda looked over at me again and I kept my eyes open for her to look at. "Mint."  
"Mint?", I repeated.  
"They're more of a pine green, miss," Magnolia interjected, looking at me as well.  
I looked over at the blue pony and nodded. "Thank you."  
"So.. pink for you and green for me. Really wondering what our coats will turn out like," I mused.  
"Yeah.. me too," my sweet girlfriend sighed, pulling one of her legs out of the water again and staring at the bald limb. "This should have fur on it. It looks weird all bald like that."  
I cast a sideways glance at her and nodded. "Yeah."  
"Do you have any shampoo, Magnolia?", Rhonda wondered, "I want to wash my mane while I still have fingers to work the shampoo in."  
I chuckled at her. "Good idea, Rho. I'll just relax a bit myself until Cherry comes back."  
With that, I leaned back against the tub's edge, only to wince and jump forward again the moment my back touched it!  
I quickly glanced over to Rho to see if she'd noticed it, but she was looking in the other direction, watching Magnolia pick up a bottle of shampoo.

I sank down until my chin hit the water, then reached behind me and felt two nubs growing out of my back. They were set in-between my shoulder blades, or bordering the edges of both, and even my soft presses were painful.  
I looked up towards the door, wondering what was keeping Cherry. How difficult was it to find a damned mirror?  
The pain in my back increased by the moment, and I was feeling the nubs grow even without having to touch them with my hands. I squinted my eyes closed at it and tried not to make a sound. I did not want to upset Rhonda again now she was feeling relaxed enough to enjoy washing her hair.  
I tried to focus on other things but the growing pain in my upper back. Puppies! Puppies were always cute. How they would.. but the pain cut my train of thought off and I let out a soft whimper. It was quickly getting unbearable.  
If it had just been a continuous pain it would have been fine, I would have been able to tune it out a bit better. But this pain was pulsating. And the nubs in my back grew at the apex of every pulse, then stopped for a moment to make the pain recede before starting the cycle all over again.  
Celestia had been right; Spritelight's magic loved to hurt me.  
I reached behind me again while doing my best to stifle my whimpers and groans. The nubs were protruding about two finger-widths now and a large area around them was sensitive to the point of hurting if it received any pressure.  
The next wave of pain came with specks of light mottling my vision, and I had to grab the edges of the bath to not slip down in it. "Hnng.."  
"Jo?", Rhonda perked up at finally hearing my groan, her shampooed mane sticking up weirdly from the top of her head.  
I gave her a weak smile, pointing behind me as I did not trust my voice.  
"Magnolia, her wings are coming out! Go get Cherry! Or Celestia! Or BOTH!", Rhonda cried out, clambering out of the bath with her awkward pony legs and moving beside the tub I was in, reaching for my left hand with both of her own and squeezing it softly. "I'm here, Josey. Focus on me."  
I tried, but the pain was just too much. I screamed out in anguish as the next wave came, and as blood started to drift around my body from the back, it mixed with the salty droplets of my tears hitting the water's surface.

With Rhonda by my side, I weathered the pain as good as I could. Which, to be completely honest, was not at all. There was no defense I could put up against the pain spreading from my back, and if it wasn't for Rhonda pulling me back out, I would have drowned a couple of times already as I smashed my face into the water from involuntary spasms and then couldn't straighten my back on my own again.  
It was impossible to measure time, and I lost track of how fast the spasms were following one another. My breathing came and went with the pain, I took my breaths in the shallows, and exhumed in agony at the peaks, and I was feeling lightheaded from lack of oxygen.  
At some point a whole bunch of ponies rushed back into the room, Celestia among them, and that rhyming Zebra soon pushed something to my lips and told me to drink.  
I must have started to hallucinate at some point, as the ponies became more and more blurry with every breath I took. They were talking, but I was barely registering what they were saying. All I knew was the pain and the blood.  
So much blood.. I think there was more blood in the bath than actual water.  
I drank the potion Zecora pushed up against my lips of course, I mean I wasn't really able to protest or think clearly at that point anymore. When somepony tells you to drink something, you'll drink it.  
I don't even know what the taste was. The room bathed in the smell of blood, scented shampoo, and the pheromones from every pony in the room, and the taste was corrupted by it. It could have been blood. Or shampoo. Or pheromone extract. I wouldn't have known.  
Whatever it was, it made the world around me fall away into darkness but just as I thought I was going to fall asleep from it, I instead found myself drifting up and out of my body!

The room around me was dark, excepting a small circular area around my body still convulsing involuntarily in the bathtub. The ponies, Rhonda, and Zecora were standing in the light radius, and I could see them talking among themselves while they were keeping me from dropping in the bath.  
From up here, I got a good look at my back and the awkward way two long bones were sticking out from it. They looked a bit like a pair of long fingers, and with each spasm from my body they slipped out a bit more.  
Celestia's horn started to glow and I saw the same glow around my body as it got lifted up by Celestia's magic, Cherry Blossom and Magnolia rushing to Rhonda's aid as the girl sank sideways, her shuddering shoulders clearly indicating she broke down crying.  
Who was that beside Zecora? I didn't know that pony. She had a purple mane and tail, with lighter streaks going through them, a blue coat, and a pair of glasses on her nose which she was moving a little with one of her hooves. She looked to be responding to something Zecora said, stretching her own wings out as much as they could so the zebra could look at them.  
I realized the blue pegasus' eyes had two different colors! Huh.. heterochromia in Equestria? Her right eye was blue, and her left brown. They had a bit of a painful look in them as she looked at my body spasming while in Celestia's magical grasp, and I turned my attention back to my body.  
The bony fingers had slipped out enough to show joints, and I could see how they would be similar to the bone structure the blue pony's wings would have underneath the feathery exterior.  
Zecora seemed to have come to the same conclusion, nodding at Celestia as the blue pony folded her wings again and settled them to her side.

Wait, her side?  
My wings were growing from my back, not from my side!  
I stared down at them as they continued to grow, while the spa ponies worked on cleaning Rhonda's mane and help her stand on her pony limbs. I could see them from a corner of my eyes but my wings were more interesting.  
Muscles and flesh grew out over the wings as they were stretched out to my sides, Celestia's magic still helping my body stay up above the surface of the water, and as the wings finalized I started to see feathers growing from them.  
They were stained with blood, but I could see their actual color emerge the more of them sprouted from my wings; yellow. Lemon yellow.  
Zecora used a hoof to wash water over my back, and I felt the shudders of my spine as I started to slowly drift down again towards my body. It was a weird feeling to reconnect like that, and I glanced over towards Rhonda before I sank low enough to make it impossible for me to see her.  
Her hooves had started to sprout fur the color of pink lace. A pink mane, pink eyes, and now pink fur?  
I shook my head and snapped to consciousness as my horn hit the side of the tub, sending a searing pain through my forehead!  
"Ow," I whimpered, and felt Celestia's magic slowly let go of me. I put my hands on the tub's edge in front of me and supported myself, feeling the muscles in my back twitch involuntarily.  
The wings themselves felt like I was wearing a backpack with something inside of it poking me at my shoulder blades. They were a little uncomfortable, and I mostly felt their weight pressing down on me.  
"Welcome back, Josey," Celestia offered, staring down at me from where she was standing. I peered up with weary eyes, feeling the fatigue of the transformation in every limb.  
"Are they done now?", I asked, my throat raw from the guttural sounds I must have been making while going through this.  
"Your wings are fully formed, my dear," I heard Zecora's voice from behind me and to the right, "But you are far from done, I fear."  
I sighed out and dropped my chin on the edge of the bath, leering tiredly over it. "Somepony shoot me." 


	9. Chapter 9

The spa ponies came around to gently brush the blood out of my wings after they were done with Rhonda, and my, now satyr, girlfriend came to sit on the floor in front of me, awkwardly folding her hoofed legs underneath herself.  
We held hands and we looked at one another in silence for a long while.  
I barely registered Celestia excusing herself, Zecora and the blue Pegasus lingering for a little while longer. The Pegasus left before Zecora did, but to me it was almost like everything was a dream I was trying to wake up from. I barely heard them talk, I barely saw them go, I only stared in my girlfriend's large orchid eyes.  
The soft strokes and dabs of cloth and soft brush that hit my wings helped me to relax however, and I pulled Rhonda a little closer to carefully press a kiss on her forehead. "How are your legs feeling?", I asked, scraping my throat a bit as my voice still sounded raw.  
Rhonda looked down at her hoofed limbs with a blush. The fur had almost completely covered them now and it only enhanced the cute marshmallow-hoof look they had going for them. "Tingly. I'm going to be a bad excuse for a pinkie pie replica, aren't I?", Rhonda sighed, and I had to giggle a little at that.  
"Nonono," I started, smiling at her. "You're entirely your own pony, my love. Just because you share a similar color scheme doesn't mean you have to start pulling confetti cannons out of thin air, ok? Although it would be awesome if you could."  
Rhonda smiled weakly at that and pulled her hands away from mine, turning sideways a moment and making grabby motions with them at the air in front of her. "Nope.. not yet."  
I laughed at her antics and felt my wings move with the shuddering of my form. "Soon!", I exclaimed, and Rhonda giggled back up at me.

"Your wings are clean, miss," Cherry Blossom's voice came from behind me, and I turned my head to look over my right shoulder at the large collection of yellow feathers protruding from my back. They looked as pristine as a canary's freshly preened plumage, and I found myself tilting my wing a little to see the damp feathers glisten in the light.  
"They look beautiful, Jo," Rhonda breathed out in admiration, and I found myself smiling back down at her with a small feeling of pride.  
These were my wings. No matter who caused them to grow on me, no matter the magic used, no matter the painful way in which they appeared. In that short moment I felt my mind connect to my wings and I spread them out behind me, feeling the shiver run down my back as I imagined myself as majestic-looking as an eagle depicted on ancient Roman standards.  
The moment didn't last, and I came crashing down from it as I realized in horror that my wings had effectively robbed me of the ability to wear a shirt. I looked down at my naked chest and the way I had pushed myself up in a standing position in the bathtub, and felt my cheeks start to burn.  
"Rho-Rho?" I started, and my girlfriend peered up from a point lower on my body to stare up at my face with her big eyes.  
"Yes, Josey?"  
"I'm naked, aren't I?" I asked, swallowing some saliva down my throat.  
"Yes, Josey," came the truthful answer. "But everypone here is right now."  
I sighed and slowly sank down in the tub again, my wings folding on my back as I did. "But you three at least have fur," I muttered, looking away in shame.

"I still have a bare chest, Jo," Rhonda retorted, and I looked back at her, trying very hard to not look at that particular part of her body. She had her arms folded in front of it anyway.  
"We're the same in that regard then," I chuckled softly, then closed my eyes and rubbed at my forehead, my fingers sort of automatically moving underneath my horn while my thumb moved to stick up, the soft skin between my thumb and index finger bumping into my horn's base as I rubbed around it.  
"Ok, let me get up out of this bath before I get all wrinkly and end up looking like Granny Smith," I finally decided, pushing away from the bath's edge and standing up in the middle of it. My legs were still fully human and I wriggled my toes in the water a bit before moving to step out via the long side of the rectangular bath.  
Cherry approached with a towel, and I thankfully accepted it to dry myself off. My mane and horn were surprisingly easy to handle, even if my hairs felt like they were thicker than my human hairs had ever been, and I soon got to the point where I would usually just wrap the towel around my back and sort of zig-zag it down to get the water from it.  
"Rhonda, can you help me with my back please?" I asked instead, and she pushed up on her hooves to walk on over with an unsteady gait. I handed her the towel and leaned in to give her another kiss on her forehead, then turned my back toward her and sighed as I felt her soft hands gently dab around my wing bases.  
"How do Pegasi do this?" I asked of Cherry, who smiled up enigmatically.  
"They just turn their heads, miss. Like so," she explained, turning her head around and nuzzling herself in the side. My jaw dropped and I moved my hand up to slap my forehead, but stopped myself in time before I would have hit my horn again.  
"I should have realized," I smirked, using my hand to rub at the side of my head instead. "So how come you're taking us being humans transforming into ponies so easily while everypony else has been gawking at us since we came here?"

Cherry shrugged at the question. "You're ponies inside, miss. It is only what's inside that matters to me. While it is true your forms right now are strange and exotic, the Princess told us you will look the same as any pony in Equestria when your transformations are complete. Why would we treat you any different than any other Equestrian if that's the case?"  
Rhonda's face moved in to nuzzle at my wings and she sighed out warmly as her arms wrapped around my waist. "I like that."  
I looked back over my shoulder, but my wing was in the way of seeing Rhonda properly. "The sentiment, you mean?"  
She nodded into my wing and I shivered from the feeling.  
"I agree it is a good thought to have. Thank you, Cherry Blossom," I smiled, turning my attention back to the pony before me.  
"It is only natural for me, miss," Cherry smiled up with a light blush on her cheeks.  
"Not everypone would agree," I offered, and the pony nodded slowly.  
"Yes, that is a shame," she sighed. "I would think we'd have a lot more Nightguards here if they were more accepted."  
"Hmm? Nightguards?" I wondered, dabbing at my upper legs with the towel Rhonda was still holding onto.  
"Yes Miss," Cherry offered with an eager smile. "I must admit I love their leathery wings. It is a rare treat when one of Princess Luna's private guards comes in and allows me to rub oils in their wings. It's such a pretty sight to see them shine in the moonlight."  
I chuckled a bit at the pony's obvious admiration for something that few ponies would have a second thought about. "So what you're saying is that feathery wings are not half as interesting to you, hmm? I see how it is." I winked, and Cherry's blush deepened immediately.  
"Oh, no miss! I mean.. they're lovely and I enjoy working on them but.. I.. erm..."  
"I'm just teasing you, Cherry," I offered, slowly sinking through my knees with Rhonda still clinging to my back. "You've been a great help to me while we've been here. You and your sister both." I added the last bit, looking over in Magnolia's direction and motioning for the two to come closer.

"Rhonda and I appreciate what you've done for us, don't we Rho?" I offered as the two spa ponies drew near, reaching my hands toward them and gently placing it to the sides of their muzzles. Magnolia inched away from my hand at first, but then carefully placed her muzzle against it as she found I didn't do anything scary to Cherry.  
"Hmm-mm," Rhonda replied, still having her face buried into my feathers, her weight leaning into me.  
I gently stroked my hands over the sides of the spa ponies' muzzles, and Cherry quickly closed her eyes while she leaned into the stroking. Magnolia tried to fight it, keeping her eyes on me, but soon succumbed to the stroking as well and closed her eyes with a soft whimper escaping her.  
"I hope you accept this small gift a simple human can give you as a thank you for your caring attentions," I continued, leading my stroking hands up to softly scritch behind both ponies' ears. "I won't be able to do this once my hands turn to hooves."  
The spa ponies sank through their forehooves at my continued scratching, and I leaned in a bit more to trail my hands down their mane line while gently scritching through their soft fur.  
Soon I, too, would wear such fur on my form. Like Rhonda, it would most likely start at my legs and then.. go from there. I idly wondered how much longer it would take, and smiled at the blissful look on the faces of the ponies before me.  
This Spritelight pony the Princess had told us about was changing humans into ponies. Hands would be turning into hooves. There would be so many pets to go without pettings.  
I sighed and pulled my hands back, and Magnolia almost immediately jumped up with a blush, moving back and hiding behind her sister. Cherry was slower to come out of her reverie, and had to blink her eyes a few times before she could push up on her hooves properly, her ears turning on her head as if she was feeling confused at what just happened.

"I'm sorry if that was too forward of me," I started, "but this is how humans back home reward other creatures for having done a good job."  
Cherry shivered in place, her cheeks reddening. "You mean pets."  
I shrugged at that.  
"It felt nice. Thank you, Princess Josey," Cherry smiled up weakly, idly scraping her right forehoof over the floor.  
I heard Rhonda giggle at that and looked away with a blush. "I'm not sure I'm a princess yet, but it was the only thing I could think of to show our appreciation."  
Magnolia mumbled something I couldn't quite catch, and I peered over Cherry's form to look at her sister. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch that?"  
"She said thank you, Princess," Cherry responded in place of Magnolia, and I smirked at the title being used again.  
"I'm not sure I can get used to that title," I muttered, and Rhonda gave me a squeeze. "Or to having a Rhonda backpack. Are you going to let go at some point in time, love? We have to meet Celestia for lunch soon."  
"But your wings are so soft!" Came the reply from my back.  
"You can nuzzle into them at any time, Rho-Rho," I sighed, moving my hands down to try and pull myself out of Rhonda's pincer-like grasp.  
If it wasn't for her also trying to hold onto the towel, I would not have succeeded, as she hid some surprising strength in her arms, but fortunately for me having knelt before, I was able to slide her arms further down and sort of step out of the circle she was making with them.  
"Aww," Rhonda pouted, and pushed up on her hooves, clinging the towel to her chest instead.  
"Cherry, do you have anything that could cover us up a bit before we go meet with Celestia?" I wondered of the spa pony, and she tilted her head at me. "Maybe something ponies wear that could be a few sizes too big so any further changes won't damage them?"

"We could probably find a coat for miss Rhonda, Princess Josey, but your wings come out at the wrong angle for any Pegasus outfit to work on you," Cherry replied in all honesty.  
"What about some pants?" I pressed, but Cherry raised an eyebrow at that. "Ok, so a skirt?"  
"Skirts should be no problem at all," the pony nodded. "We have a wide variety of those."  
"Can you find us a couple that works with our colors?" I asked, "I would think my coat will look yellow as well, considering my wings?"  
"Most likely, yes Princess Josey," she agreed. "Shall I send a guard out to find the court tailor for your top?"  
I looked back at Rhonda, still hiding her chest from sight with the wet towel, and then stretched my wings out behind me to look at their size. "That might be wise, yes. Maybe something with an open back would work, until we change more."  
"Like a chest guard, Princess?" Magnolia piped up, and I looked in her direction with some surprise.  
"Er... yeah, like a chest guard, I guess," I replied, reaching up to scratch an itch behind my right ear.  
"Just make sure it's made of cloth and hangs down to about waist level," I continued, marking the location by placing my left hand at my lowermost ribs.  
Magnolia nodded and turned to her sister. "I'll go get their clothes then, Cherry?"  
Cherry nodded slowly, the movement of her ears and tail indicating she was as surprised as I was at the other pony's sudden initiative, and Magnolia all-but galloped out of the bathrooms.  
"Perhaps she was a bit more overwhelmed by us than she let on?" I mused, and Cherry smiled up weakly.  
"It looks to be that way, Princess. I do hope she remembers to bring the skirts as well."  
I moved to pull Rhonda into a hug, her naked form pressing into mine, and I smiled back at Cherry while Rhonda rested her head atop my chest. "It's not like it will matter in a few hours. At the rate we're changing, we'll be fully transformed before the end of the day."  
Cherry nodded slowly at that, flicking one of her ears, and I felt a twitch to the side of my head. So the ears would be next, then. I leaned down to press a kiss on top of Rhonda's head and looked past her mane at her right ear, letting out a soft chuckle as it started to look a bit elven in appearance... 


	10. Chapter 10

With new clothes courtesy of the court tailor Uniquity, a flamboyant unicorn who looked as much like a stereotypical gay fashion designer as any pony could, Rhonda and I left the baths in search of the main dining hall, where Celestia would be waiting for us.  
Followed by two of the princess' guards we walked arm-in-arm to allow Rhonda to use me as a crutch. She had some trouble keeping balance, but with every step I felt her lean into me for support less and less.  
By the time we made it to the great hall, she was walking beside me as if she'd always walked on hooves instead of feet, and I gave her a warm smile before turning my attention to our hostess.  
"Thank you for not letting me drown just now, princess Celestia," I offered, bowing down lightly and feeling my wings spread behind me almost automatically.  
Rhonda giggled and played her fingers through my feathers as my wing stopped her from moving forward, and I felt a shiver run down my spine at the nice feeling it evoked. I was going to miss her fingers most once our transformations completed.  
"Of course, princess Josey," Celestia smiled, bowing her head a bit to me as well. "Would you both join me for lunch?"  
I straightened my back again, my wings folding in the same motion, and smiled up. "We would be honored to."  
Celestia took a few steps aside to show the long table filled with platters of varying sizes on which a large assortment of food was laid out for the taking. There were cupcakes, truffles, layered cakes, and ice cream for those with a sweet tooth. Carrots, celery, lettuce, and a variety of flowers and leaves I didn't recognize for those seeking a healthier diet. And then there were at least six pails of liquid of various colorations standing around a glass punchbowl in the center of the table.  
I looked around myself in wonder and did a quick head count. Besides Celestia, Rhonda, and myself, there were eight guards standing along the long sides of the room, two off in the distance near the doors leading further through the palace, two behind us at the doors through which we made our entry, and the two which had been following us.  
"Do the guards eat with us, princess?" I wondered, and she let out a curious chuckle.  
"Now that would be an idea," she giggled, but shook her head immediately after. "No, it's just us three."  
I stared at the food on the table again and then scratched the back of my neck. "That's a lot of food for just three ponies, princess."  
Celestia raised an eyebrow, nudging her head toward Rhonda. "I would not be too worried about that, dear Josey. But please, call me Celestia. We're both princesses."  
I turned my head to look at Rhonda and immediately saw the hunger on her face, her ears tilted forward a little even if they still looked far too human, and her tail flicking behind her as if she was waiting to be told she could dig in.  
"Rho?" I tried, but Celestia chuckled.  
"Why don't you two sit down and we can talk some more while we're having lunch?"  
There was a pink blur before Celestia was good and well done with her question, and I followed it to see Rhonda seated on one of the cushions set out around the table, eagerly scanning all the food in front of her.  
I followed at a slightly slower pace, taking my seat beside Rhonda and watched as Celestia set herself down opposite us rather than at the head of the table.

The princess' horn glowed as she reached for a pail of milk and poured herself a glass of it, then offered it to us.  
"I didn't know ponies drank milk?" I wondered, holding my glass up with my hand for her to fill.  
Celestia smiled enigmatically and filled my glass halfway, then moved the pail back to its original position. "Have a sip, Josey. And please feel free to take what you want to eat. The palace staff can make more when necessary."  
The latter sentence was aimed more at Rhonda than at me, and my girlfriend moved along the table like a whirlwind, scooping up food from several different platters before sitting down beside me again and stuffing her mouth.  
I shook my head in amusement as I lifted the glass of milk to my face, and sniffed it. It smelled like normal milk which we got from cows back home, but there was a light tinge of acidity to it which cow's milk only had when it started to go bad.  
Celestia noticed the pull of my facial muscles and leaned in over the table. "It is mother's milk, donated by pregnant mares who started to lactate before they deliver their foals. It is a delicacy in our world."  
I stared down at the milk and raised an eyebrow. "Donated?"  
"There's a rare condition in our world where pregnant mares start to lactate several months before their foals are ready to be born," Celestia further clarified. "Their breasts fill to the point where they start to leak, but there's no foal to drink from them yet."  
I nodded slowly, taking a soft sip from the milk. It tasted different from cow's milk back home, but it didn't taste bad at all. The mild acidity actually helped its unique taste to come out better.  
"In the past, such mares would turn to their stallions," Celestia continued, "which had the unintended side-effect of their stallions getting drunk."  
I peered out over my glass and raised an eyebrow, but still took another sip of the milk. It was strange to think someone could get drunk over a glass of milk, but there was still something about the taste I couldn't quite place.  
"You see," Celestia chuckled, taking a sip from her own glass before continuing, "there's a relatively high amount of salt in mother's milk. This won't affect a newborn foal, but an adult pony is more susceptible to an overabundance of salt and will get drunk from it. Especially when the milk is consumed in large quantities."  
Salt. That was it. It was slightly salty. I took a bit of a bigger gulp of milk and let it rest in my mouth for a moment before swallowing. "You're right. It is somewhat salty," I nodded, putting my glass back down near my plate and promptly watching a chunk of cake fall in it.  
"Rhonda, love, do watch where your food is flying?" I sighed, plucking the cake out of my glass and dispensing it on my girlfriend's half-empty plate.  
Rhonda, her face and hands smeared with chocolate and bits of cake and other confectionery, nodded to my words and jumped up to get a refill.  
I looked down at my own empty plate and smirked. "Perhaps I should get some food for myself before Rhonda finishes everything that's on the table?"  
Celestia smiled in my direction and her horn glowed as she levitated some plant leaves over, and topped it off with a few flowers.

"Can I," I started, hesitantly, then looked up at where my horn was. "How would I... er..."  
Celestia tilted her head at me. "How would you use your magic, you mean?"  
I nodded and reached up to touch my horn, playing my fingers along the grooves.  
"I'm not sure if you're able to yet, considering your half-finished transformation," Celestia spoke her concern, "but if you feel you are ready to try, it is fairly simple to explain but difficult to master."  
I looked her right in the eyes and nodded. "I want to know."  
"I assume you want to learn how to levitate things first, considering the question came up as I filled my plate?" Celestia chuckled, and I blushed as I nodded.  
"It looked a whole lot more effective than running around grabbing everything separately. A lot more hygienic as well."  
The princess looked down at her plate and levitated a small flower over from it to mine. It was a daisy, looking to be freshly cut from its stem as its petals were still brimming with life. "Let's start small. Focus on the daisy and imagine it floating upward from its plate. When you have that image in your head, try to push that image into your horn and, from there, to the daisy."  
I stared at the flower on my plate and narrowed my eyes at it. "Ok, little thing, you're going to go up a few inches until you're hovering above the plate. I'm going to imagine you there now," I mumbled to myself.  
In my head, I tried to place the image of the flower as an overlay over where it was as I looked at it, then tried to push that image through my forehead into my horn. I needed a few tries before I got my thoughts under control, but then had enough focus to make the image drift off until it hovered where my horn was.  
"Now from my horn to the flower," I whispered in utter concentration, moving the mental image down to the plate until it was a perfect overlay again.  
Nothing happened.  
Nothing continued to happen.  
I blinked and looked up at Celestia, who was staring very hard onto her own plate, her face scrunched up as if she was holding back her laughter.  
I sighed and folded my arms in front of my chest. "That's not fair, Celestia," I pouted. "You've had a thousand years and then some to perfect your magic. I've only started to turn into a pony yesterday."  
Celestia tried to regain her composure, but I saw the twinkle in her eyes as she turned them up to look at me.  
"You knew it wasn't going to work, did you?" I asked, and she immediately turned serious.  
"No, Josey, I didn't," she assured me. "Trust me when I say that, over the years, a lot of different ponies have amazed me with what they could do against all odds. I did warn you that it may be too soon, but I was rooting for you."

I sighed and looked down at my plate, noticing the daisy had gone missing from it, but a pair of chocolate smears had been left in its place.  
"Rhonda," I sighed, looking beside me and seeing Pinkie Pie look back at me. "Rhonda?"  
"Yes Josey?" 'Pinkie' said, pausing a moment from stuffing her fully formed and furred muzzle with food.  
I tentatively reached out to touch her cake-stained face, shaking my head in bewilderment. "Wow.. I didn't.. How did that?" I stammered, and Rhonda nuzzled softly into my hand.  
"Hmm," Celestia hummed, calling one of her guards over and sending him on his way to fetch Magic Ink.  
I was still captivated by my lover's fully formed pony face and did not notice the other changes, until a pink hoof moved up to touch my hand.  
Shocked by the touch, I fell over backward and shook my head at the fully formed pony sitting where Rhonda had not a moment ago.  
She was pink. Everything about her was pink. Pink mane, pink coat, pink eyes. Different shades of pink, to be sure, but she was pink all over!  
Rhonda looked confused at my reaction, but followed my gaze downward until she spotted her forehooves and quickly held them up in front of her face. "My hands!"  
"Hooves," Celestia corrected.  
"When did this happen? I didn't even notice!" Rhonda exclaimed, looking around herself from where she was sitting. "I was just eating until Josey called my name, and then she went all confused and now I have hooves?"  
"I wonder if it's the food," Celestia mused, leaning down to take a bite out of her own while studying Rhonda's responses from the corner of her eyes.  
"I had some of that milk, Celestia," I reminded her, "Shouldn't I be showing signs of changes as well if that was the case?"  
Celestia narrowed her eyes at the thought, then swallowed and looked back at Rhonda again. "Can you please stand up, dear?"  
Rhonda blinked up and turned her eyes toward the princess. "Stand up?"  
"Yes, my little pony," Celestia offered with a smile. "Just stand up from your cushion, please."  
Rhonda shrugged and put her forehooves down on the ground, then pushed her rump up so she was standing on all fours, her clothes dropping on the floor beside her. "Like this?"  
"Does that feel natural to you?" Celestia asked, and Rhonda shrugged lightly.  
"I guess?"  
I got up and walked over to my girlfriend, looking down at how small she was in comparison. Her flank barely reached up to my hips, with the top of her head still below where my breasts... had been.  
I stared down at myself and patted down my chest area. "Where'd my boobs go?"  
Celestia's laughter filled the room again and I looked up to watch her move a hoof in a downward motion.

I pulled my shirt up to look at my belly, and there they were; two floppy-looking teats.  
"That's..." I started.  
"Pretty normal for a pony, dear Josey," Celestia finished my sentence for me. "You will find Rhonda's in the same location."  
"I didn't even notice the change!" I exclaimed, then pointed back at my wings as I spread them open. "I FELT THOSE!"  
"It may have something to do with the nature of the mother's milk, dear," Celestia smiled, lifting her own glass to her lips and taking a sip of it.  
I stared at her in confusion, my wings still spread but slowly sinking down a little as my arms fell down to my sides again. "I'm not a foal."  
"But you are a pony," Celestia returned. "A pony who may be slightly intoxicated already. Are you, by chance, feeling dizzy?"  
I shrugged and reached a hand up again to feel at the side of my head. "A little. I wasn't going to bring it up."  
Celestia just nodded with a knowing smile. "You may not want to finish your drink then, Josey."  
I sighed and folded my wings again, looking down at the pink pony called Rhonda beside me. "You were eating way too fast."  
"And you've not eaten anything yet, silly," she chuckled up at me, licking her muzzle clean.  
"You look too cute like that," I sighed, sinking through my legs and wrapping my arms around her neck, leaning my head in against her mane. "Not as puffy a mane as Pinkie's, but it suits you."  
I felt her lean in against me as well and she nuzzled back up at me. "Probably because I'm not Pinkie Pie. I'm my own pony."  
"Without a cutiemark," I chuckled, poking her blank flank with a finger.  
Her head turned to look back at herself and her ears flopped down against her head. "Aww.. I was actually curious at what it would be."  
The doors opened and Magic Ink trotted in, moving to Celestia's side and pulling his notepad out of a saddlebag. I could hear Celestia's whispers as my ears turned in their direction. She was filling him in on what had happened so far.  
"Josey?" Rhonda wondered, and I pulled away from her a bit so she could turn to look at me.  
"Yes Rho?"  
"You should eat something," she offered with a concerned look on her face. "And take another sip of that milk too."  
I looked up at the table, then winced a bit from a twinge of pain shooting through my leg. "I'm not feeling that hungry, Rho."  
"Trust me. You want to go eat something," Rhonda insisted. "And don't try to stand up."  
I raised an eyebrow at that last part, then looked down at my legs as I felt another flash of pain.  
"Oh. Oh, right," I stammered, looking away from what looked like boiling bubbling flesh surrounding my lower limbs and crawling over to the table to grab a hold of the glass of milk. "Damn the consequences, I really don't want to feel this!" I cried out, downing the remainder of the milk down my throat. 


	11. Chapter 11

My head was throbbing by the time I woke up again, and I groaned in misery as I carefully opened an eye to the darkness of the room. It was clear that it was the middle of the night, and I was resting on my back in the room Rhonda and I had stayed in before.  
A weight shifted against my right side and I looked at it, watching pony Rhonda rest with her back against me, her head on a pillow and my arm stuck under her neck.  
She was sleeping soundly and I didn't want to wake her, so I reached my other arm up and held my hand up in front of my face. "Still human," I croaked, my throat feeling dry.  
A movement near one of the windows drew my attention to it and I watched as Luna moved away from it to silently walk over to the bed.  
"I'm glad to see you have regained consciousness," she spoke in a soft tone, pouring some water into a glass and lifting it up toward me with her magic. "Drink some. It will help against your hangover."  
I reached for the glass with my hand, but grabbed thin air instead. I was sure I had aimed correctly, but my hand was slightly to the left of the glass.  
I tried again, moving my hand sideways until it bumped into the glass and then closing my fingers around it once I was assured I had it. Success! I reached the glass down and proceeded to splash the contents of it over my face rather than pouring it down my throat.  
Luna raised an eyebrow and levitated the glass out of my hand again. "It is common for a state of inebriation to affect one's motor skills. Don't worry. I will move the glass for you."  
I nodded up while carefully lowering my hand so I could wipe my face. "Thank you."  
"My sister told me what happened," Luna smirked, bringing a newly filled glass to my lips and tilting it a little to let the water flow into my mouth. "You are a lightweight by our standards, but it is to be expected. Have you ever had any salt before?"  
I swallowed the water and felt it rush down my parched throat, nodding softly as Luna lifted the glass a little again. "Back on Earth it's used to add flavour to various dishes. Humans don't get drunk from it," I explained, pushing myself up a little on my left elbow and carefully trying to slide my arm out from under Rhonda.  
A dark blue light enveloped the pony beside me and she was lifted gently up in the air as I pulled my arm out from under her, then laid down gently once again. Rubbing my right arm with my left hand to get the blood flowing through it again, I nodded in Luna's direction.  
"Thanks."  
"You would have woken her. And she is having such a sweet dream right now," Luna revealed, smiling in Rhonda's direction much like a parent would to their sleeping child.  
"Oh, right," I realized, "You can see into others' dreams. I just thought you had to be physically there?"  
Luna reached the glass back up to my lips and I took a sip from it as she tilted it, moving the muscles in my back a little without opening my wings up. I could feel the tension in them from having laid on them.  
"Dreams are not physical, Josey. I would not be able to have a physical presence in them," Luna smiled. "It is purely a representation of my spiritual energy which transfers into other ponies' dreamworlds."  
"I see," I mumbled, daring to stretch my wings out slowly over the bed and Rhonda on one side, and out beside Luna on the other side.

"Do you remember what happened before we put you to bed, Josey?" Luna asked, and I shook my head slowly.  
"I remember sitting on the floor with Rhonda, and then.. something.. and OH!" I reached down and flung the covers off of my legs, staring down at the bare pony legs attached to my hips. They felt normal enough, from the hip down to the hoof, but it was still a weird thing to see after almost twenty years of having had feet.  
Luna looked down at my legs as well, and I could feel her breath fall over the exposed limbs.  
"I'm not wearing any clothes," I realized, and Luna shrugged lightly.  
I didn't feel embarrassed even with Luna looking me over. She felt safe. I had felt this before, I realized. Luna was safe. "Safe from the spiders," I mumbled, vaguely remembering part of the dream.  
The princess of the night looked up with a smile and moved the glass over again. "It is always nice to hear somepony remembering their dreams," she confided in me as I drank more of the water. "Most ponies forget them as soon as they wake."  
I gave her a nod and emptied my glass, then reached out to put it on the bedside table. Only with Luna's help did it make it there in one piece, and I looked down in embarrassment.  
"I've never been drunk before," I offered, "It's very strange."  
"You were acting very strange yesterday as well, as far as I heard," Luna chuckled. "Once the shock of your transformed legs had settled, you apparently danced on the table kicking food around everywhere."  
"I... did?" I blinked, moving to turn so I could dangle my legs over the side of the bed and face Luna properly. They hit the ground before I had thought they would, and I had to move a little to sit comfortably.  
"Oh, it did not end there. You ran off into the palace garden, disrobed yourself, and started to eat from Celestia's prized flowerbeds. If you are feeling a stomach ache, that would be why."  
I looked down and poked at my stomach, a pocket of air quickly rising up through my esophagus as a result. I stifled my burp with the back of my other hand, but Luna still shook her head.  
"There is a reason why some flowers are for eating, and others for looking pretty," the princess smirked. "I would not recommend eating nightshade, for example."  
I blushed deeply and nodded at her. "Noted."  
I looked at Luna's mane and watched it as it moved as if there was a gust of wind moving around the princess' head, and reached my hand out for it. "May I touch your mane, princess?"  
Luna raised an eyebrow, but nodded slowly. "If you feel the need to?"  
I gently brushed my hand against the dark form, feeling the soft hairs flow around my hand like a cool night's breeze. With my fingers parting the hairs I could make out the individual strands which flowed together so perfectly to form the illusion of a starry night's sky.  
"It's beautiful," I breathed out, and Luna smiled up more.  
"It took some time to grow it out to this length," she muttered.  
"I saw your mane after the Elements of Harmony had broken Nightmare Moon's spell," I offered, and Luna winced visibly. "Your mane wasn't this long then, and it did not move like this."  
Luna shook her head at that, gently pulling away from my hand and I withdrew it. "No, it did not."  
"Did Celestia's look as it does now, back when she was young?" I inquired, and Luna shook her head. "So you both used magic then."  
Luna looked away and licked her lips, not answering my question.

I studied her for a moment, but then shrugged and looked down at my hooves standing on the ground beside the bed. "It doesn't matter. It looks good on you."  
Luna dared to look back at that, her smile returning.  
"But there's something wrong with my legs," I huffed. "They're too long."  
Luna moved closer and turned to put her own back leg beside mine and then looked back at both of them for a size comparison.  
"Maybe a little," she agreed, "but they're still shorter than my sister's."  
I pushed up from the bed into a standing position and looked at where my hip was in relation to Luna's, and nodded. "I'm sorry if this puts me in-between you and Celestia, height wise."  
"Why would you apologize for that?" Luna wondered, turning around to face me again. "I am still catching up to a thousand years of development. Even Cadance is slightly taller than me."  
"She is?" I wondered, and Luna nodded.  
"Her horn is smaller than mine, but she is a few inches taller overall."  
I looked between Luna's flank and my own hips again and flushed as I realized something. "That puts me between Cadance and Celestia, then."  
Luna smiled and nodded. "So it seems. Let us wait until your transformation completes, Josey. It is easier to see that way."  
Luna walked over to a box set up on the dresser and lifted the top off of it with her magic. "Would you care for a midnight snack? As far as my sister told me, you have not eaten anything all day yesterday."  
I felt my stomach growl and nodded, walking closer to find a stack of sandwiches on a silver platter hidden within the box.  
"I am hungry, yes. But will this force my body to transform faster, like lunch did to Rhonda?" I wondered, motioning back to the still sleeping pink one on the bed.  
Luna shrugged and sat down on her haunches. "That question goes beyond my knowledge. It is mainly alfalfa bread with some grass and flowers."  
"Any daisies?" I asked, giggling softly as I sat down opposite Luna beside the dresser.  
"Why are daisies so funny?" Luna wondered, lowering the box between us so I could more easily reach for the sandwiches within and pulling one out for herself.  
I shrugged and reached for a sandwich with my right hand. "It's just that Celestia tried to teach me how to levitate a daisy during lunch. Didn't work. It didn't move at all."  
"She did the picture thing again, did she not?" Luna wondered after swallowing the bite she'd taken.  
"Yeah, imagining the flower to fly up or something," I muttered, lifting the top piece of bread up a bit to look at the green stuff held in-between. "Looks like mostly grass and some leaves I don't know."  
"Every pony is different, Josey," Luna sighed, using her magic to close my sandwich up again. "If you are going to be a picky eater, I will not help you to understand your magic."

I looked up at her frowning face and took a quick bite from the sandwich in my hands. "Sowwy."  
Luna nodded and continued with a light smile. "When we learn to use our magic, we instinctively use what feels right to us. In my sister's case it was to envision what she wanted to have happen in her head, and then make that image a reality."  
I nodded while chewing on my food. It had an odd taste to it, not unlike tea drawn up from nettle leaves, and I was surprised by how well it worked with the grass and bread together. My stomach growled again to remind me how hungry I was, and I quickly swallowed to take another bite from my sandwich.  
"Other ponies are more instinctive and do not need to build a picture in their head to focus their magic. I personally believe it allows for us to respond quicker than those working along Celestia's image magic."  
I finished my sandwich and nodded, reaching for a new one to resume eating.  
"My sister and I fought Discord together, and I sent off a volley of magic bursts into him before Celestia even hit him once. She took too much time preparing her spells and we would have lost if she had not quickened her pace halfway through the battle. She slowed me down. It did not work to help me fight my jealousy afterward, when she received all the praise."  
I reached for my third sandwich but kept my ears perked, this was something I didn't know yet!  
"In time it caused me to rebel against Celestia. We stood opposite one another on the battlefield with our armies ready to gallop forward and see which would be stronger; the day, or the night."  
Luna sighed and took a thoughtful bite out of her own sandwich, while I reached for the fourth or fifth? I don't know, I lost count. It tasted so good I just had to continue eating!  
"By the time I realized she had been working on a spell long before we met for the final battle, it was too late. She had been powering it up for a long while and I could see the exhaustion in her eyes as she banished me to the moon. Nothing but a shadow printed on its surface."  
A light chuckle escaped her and she shook her head. "What I mean to say is that if you have the time to use Celestia's technique, by all means do so. But if you need to respond quickly, there is no use in creating an image in your head and only then putting it out there. You will want to put it out there immediately."  
"Take these sandwiches, for instance," Luna offered, looking down and motioning at the, now empty, box with a forehoof.  
I swallowed my last bit of sandwich and fell back, sighing out in relief. My stomach was nice and full again and I was feeling oddly ecstatic.  
Luna raised an eyebrow at me. "So you did," she mumbled, then finished the rest of her own sandwich in silence.

Luna remained silent, even as my body convulsed and spasmed as it transformed further with the help of the Equestrian food fueling it.  
I felt sick laying on the ground in front of the dresser, puking out blood as my internal organs rearranged themselves and generally feeling like I was going to die on the spot. The blood rushing up through my throat had one positive; I could not scream out in pain, leaving Rhonda in blissful sleep on the bed.  
Before my bloodshot eyes I saw my hands bloat up into hooves, the joints popping and shifting as my arms turned into a pair of forelegs. As with Rhonda before, the changes passed by faster than they had in the past, and it didn't take long for them to subside, leaving me shuddering in the cold early morning air.  
I pulled my hooves up close to my chest underside and trembled from the cold, spitting out a few remaining bits of blood from my newly formed muzzle.  
Luna stood up and I felt myself get lifted up by her magic. The blood I had been laying in dripped down from my form and I watched her levitating some water from the jug on the bedside table over to gently wash it out of my coat and mane.  
I had some difficulty focusing as she did, getting moved around by her magic, but once she was done I was lowered onto the bed beside my love Rhonda. I almost automatically wrapped my forelegs around her and pulled her close, with me being the big spoon.  
Luna tucked us in under the blankets and cleaned up after me, and I took the time to stare down my muzzle at the pale yellow fur covering my newly formed limbs. I felt a little like a citrus fruit.  
I lay my head down on the pillow and mused at feeling Rhonda's smaller form. As far as I could judge she was about half my size, and she fitted perfectly as little spoon as we rested on the bed.  
I brought my head forward a little to sniff at her mane and smiled at the scent coming from her. Definitely my Rhonda.  
Comforted by the familiar smell, and exhausted from what must have been the final stage of my transformation, I closed my eyes with my chin resting on top of Rhonda's head. 


	12. Chapter 12

Luna remained in our room until we woke up, Rhonda's excitement at seeing my changes finalized causing her to jump around me like a puppy getting a treat. She even shot underneath me from left to right and back again, making it difficult for me to walk toward the door.  
"Thank you again for keeping watch over us, princess Luna," I smiled at the, now shorter, princess and she nodded slowly.  
"I guard the night, princess Josey. I was happy to help." Luna opened the door and motioned toward it. "Cadance and Twilight have arrived from the Crystal Empire. My sister is expecting us all for breakfast."  
I stretched my wings out a bit as I let out a yawn, and felt they were more comfortable stretched than they were folded at my side, I looked over at Luna and realized hers were unfolded as well.  
"I'm starting to see why all Alicorns keep their wings stretched," I muttered, but then put a hoof down in front of Rhonda to stop her from running around. "How about we focus on getting some breakfast first, and you can run around me after?" I suggested, and she went wide-eyed at the thought!  
"YAY! FOOD!" she exclaimed, and rushed out through the open door before I could comment on her seemingly boundless energy.  
"Does she remind you of somepony?" I wondered of Luna as I passed her by, shaking my head lightly as Rhonda had already disappeared down the next hallway.  
Luna closed the door behind us and trotted up to my left side, looking up. "She is just as excited, yes."  
"And as pink," I added.  
"If not for her eyes, they would be a perfect match," Luna nodded, leading me into the turn to our right.  
I smiled down at her before looking up ahead at the double doors behind which the great hall was located.  
"I did not do too much damage, did I? Just some flowerbeds?" I asked with some trepidation.  
"You have already been forgiven for what you did," Luna replied, smiling up at me. "Do not worry. The most she would do is banish you to the moon for a thousand years."  
I missed a step and had to find my hoofing again, but Luna was laughing merrily at her own joke.  
I caught up to her and snorted. "That was not funny."  
"Indeed. But I do so love how you responded to it," Luna grinned mischievously.  
We stopped at the door and Luna motioned to the guards to keep the doors closed for a moment longer, turning to face me.  
"Before we join the others, there is one thing I need to ask of you," she said, her tone as serious as the look on her face.  
I raised an eyebrow. "What would that be, princess Luna?"  
"If you ever feel any jealousy, any dark thoughts, any desire to do harm to another, please let me know?" Luna almost pleaded, and I could see how deep her fear was of another Nightmare Moon rising.  
I reached my left forehoof up and held it to my chest. "I promise, Luna. Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a cupcake in my eye." I mimicked the last bit, putting my hoof over my closed eye.  
Luna chuckled lightly, turning back to the doors. "If there was any question of why your girlfriend turned into a Pinkie Pie clone, you just answered it."  
"Oh, ha-ha," I stated, before taking a deep breath and turning for the doors myself.

Luna gave a nod to the guards and they moved to push the doors open, revealing the large table with its many cushions stacked around it and with various items used during breakfast laid out on it. A few ponies were sitting around it already.  
I raised an eyebrow as Rhonda was seated all cuddled-up to Cadance's left side, her forelegs hugged around the princess while Cadance gently stroked a hoof through Rhonda's mane, but I followed Luna into the room regardless.  
"...but found no useful information," Twilight Sparkle finished what she was saying, then looked up and waved a wing in our direction.  
"I'm sorry to hear that, Twilight. But all hope is not yet lost. Josey here may prove to be our trump card," Celestia smiled, and I felt my cheeks darken.  
"Trump card? I'm not sure what you're talking about, Celestia," I smirked, returning the wingwaves from Twilight and Cadance both.  
Luna walked over to sit on the left beside Celestia, stifling a yawn before levitating some food her way, and I looked between Celestia and Luna on the one side of the table, and Twilight, Cadance, Rhonda, and Shining Armor on the other.  
"Would you terribly mind if I come sit beside you, Celestia?" I wondered, and the sun princess laughed softly to that.  
"Not at all, Josey, please feel free to," she returned, pulling a glass and a plate over from a stack further down the table and setting them down in front of me as I sat down on the pillow to her right.  
I looked over at Twilight Sparkle's face, her pondering gaze having followed me as I made my way around the table, and tilted my head a little at her. The movement shocked her from her thoughts, and she looked down a little.  
"I must say, I would have never imagined myself to be sitting opposite the world-famous Twilight Sparkle," I started, and Twilight's face darkened with a blush as she looked up. "Do you know that your adventures are broadcast around the world back on Earth? So many little girls and boys look up to you, although they can't seem to come to a consensus about whether it was a good thing you became an Alicorn or not. I'd imagine they'd say the same about me," I chuckled.  
Twilight just stared at me, so I looked around at the items on the table. There were a few types of cereal, some bread, two types of cupcake; one set with glazing and one set without, and an assortment of freshly picked greens with some flowers on the side. To drink there was water, several types of juice, and a pail of milk.  
"More mother's milk, Celestia?" I wondered, but the pony to my left shook her head. I turned mine to face her and noticed we really didn't differ that much in height. I was only a little shorter than her.  
"This is fresh cow's milk," she revealed. "Also donated."  
I shrugged and moved some cereal into a bowl, then poured some of the cow's milk over it. "As long as it doesn't make me drunk, I'm fine with it."

Celestia's giggling reached my ears at about the same time as I reached a spoonful of cereal to my lips, and I looked up to see practically every pony around the table looking at me with various odd looks on their faces.  
"What? Did I say something wrong?" I wondered, putting my lips around the spoon and licking the cereal off of it.  
Celestia was laughing too hard for me to get anything worthwhile out of her response, Luna just smiled with some sense of pride in her gaze, but otherwise remained silent. Across the table Shining Armor looked at me as if he was trying to judge whether I would be a threat, and Twilight's jaw had just about dropped under the table. Rhonda was staring at me as if she'd seen a ghost, and that just left Cadance.  
I pulled the spoon from my mouth, swallowed, and looked her straight in her love-filled eyes. "What's going on, Cadance?"  
"Celestia just told us you were incapable of using your magic," Cadance offered with a warm smile. "Whatever happened overnight, you just made yourself breakfast. It's quite an achievement to go from being unable to use your magic, to levitating items across a fair distance with not so much as a wobble."  
"Impossible, I'd say," Twilight murmured, having finally gotten her composure back.  
"Now why would it have to be impossible?" Luna sighed, "Did you not write in one of your reports that a newborn unicorn foal had given your friend Pinkie Pie a run for her money?"  
"That's different," Twilight remarked with a snort, "Pumpkin Cake was born a unicorn. Josey has been a human all her life."  
"But she was reborn as an Alicorn during the night, Twilight," Cadance cut in again, but then looked down at the catatonic pink pony to her side. "Although perhaps Rhonda was not aware she could do magic yet."  
"Calm down, everypony," Celestia finally stated after recovering from her laughing fit, and turned to face me.  
I was feeling just about like the joke of the century here. I had not even realized I was using my magic!  
"Josey, dear, do you know what you just did?" Celestia asked, and I shrugged dumbly.  
"Apparently I used my magic," I responded.  
"Not only that, but you proved you're the best pony for the job of dealing with Spritelight," Celestia smiled.  
I turned my head down to look at my cereal. "Why's that?"  
"Shining, how high was her mana expenditure there?" Celestia asked, and I looked up at the stallion at the unfamiliar sentence.  
"Very low. I could barely register she was using any at all," Shining replied, shaking his head in disbelief. "Does this mean what I think it does, Celestia?"  
The sun princess turned to her former student. "Mana expenditure is related to what, Twilight?"  
Twilight coughed and recited "The amount of mana expenditure per magic act is directly related to the amount of total mana a pony can tap into."  
"And a low mana expenditure means that such a pony has? Anypony?" Celestia asked as if she was teaching a class of foals.

"The sheer.. unlimited.. things... we could... do with that.." Rhonda gasped, and everypony's head turned to her.  
"Pardon?" Celestia blinked.  
"JUST IMAGINE!" Rhonda exclaimed, jumping up on the table and pointing around as if seeing the whole world unfold in front of her. "We could end wars! Bring happiness to the depressed! Rain chocolate from the sky!"  
I felt my ears tilt down and winced as a tricolor of magic enveloped Rhonda, sitting her down beside Cadance again. Celestia, Luna, and Twilight frowned at my girlfriend and Cadance wrapped her forelegs protectively around her.  
"Ssh," Cadance hushed, and Rhonda slowly calmed down again.  
A collective sigh came from around the table and Celestia turned her suddenly weary head toward me. "And this is what happened to Spritelight. It is these, and thoughts along a similar vein, which make her so dangerous."  
I nodded slowly and felt everypony except for Cadance looking in my direction again.  
"I don't think it's right to take choice away from anypony," I started softly, but then scraped my throat and looked up, directly into Rhonda's eyes. "If Earth changes, it will be because its people decide to change. I can't make that decision for them."  
Rhonda opened her mouth, but Cadance put her hoof to it and Rhonda's eyes turned down.  
"A superhero back on Earth kept repeating the same sentence; With great power comes great responsibility," I continued, looking away from Rhonda as I saw she got it and looking at each of the ponies around the table in turn, until I looked in Luna's eyes. "I don't understand how I'm suddenly able to use my magic. I don't get this talk about mana. But I do get the gist of the conversation."  
Luna smiled weakly under my enduring gaze, and I smiled toward her. "I had a great teacher in Luna," I turned my eyes back to Twilight, "in Twilight," and then finally turned to look at Celestia, "and in Celestia. The show back home taught us so much about how some would abuse their power and only hurt themselves and others in the process."  
I paused a moment and felt my tail twitch. "I don't want to be that pony."  
Everypony nodded at that. "This is what we all decided, Josey," Celestia offered in a soft tone. "At one point or another the choice comes for us all; do we want to use our power for good, or do we want to force our opinions upon others?"  
Luna sniffled and I looked up to see her leaning into Celestia's side, one of Celestia's wings folded around her.  
"Luna made a mistake, once. Blinded as she was by her jealousy. As did Twilight, when she forced the citizens of Ponyville to fight over one of her toys," Celestia continued, and I looked up to see Twilight looking away. "But they both returned to doing good. They learned from their mistakes. We're able to keep Equestria a safe place because of their choices."

"And now I must make one," I cut in, knowing where this was headed. "Do I want to help Spritelight by doing everything I can to find her and make her see what she is doing? Giving her the choice to make things right again? Or do I want to hunt her down and kill her for the pain she's caused me and others?"  
Celestia nodded at that. "We did not kill Discord. I did not kill my sister Luna. In both cases I chose to give them time to think about what they had done. In the hopes that they would turn for the better."  
"Sombra is a lost cause," Shining sighed.  
Celestia agreed, "Yes. Unfortunately some are too lost for us to help them. We will have to keep Sombra away from the Crystal Empire for now. But I still have hope he, too, will come to see the error of his ways. It may take a thousand years, or a million. We may not be here when it happens, but one day perhaps."  
I nodded in unison with the other ponies around the table. "When Discord came for Rhonda and myself, he made mention of the borders between worlds. Of creatures far worse than him waiting for their time to strike."  
Twilight perked up and nodded quickly. "Yes, we read about that in the Crystal Empire library. Worldeaters they're called."  
"I don't care what they are called," I shrugged, and looked around the table. "If I find Spritelight. If I manage to help her become good again, or even if I don't. Is there a chance for these things to be locked away again?"  
Celestia looked over at Twilight, and everypony else followed her gaze.  
"I," Twilight started, looking troubled. "There was no mention of any ritual or spell that locked them away. All the books said was that they would appear when the dimensional walls would break. That they would cause the end of the world."  
"Then it is high time I started to look for Spritelight," I decided, pushing up from my cushion. "When do I leave?"  
Rhonda jumped up and ran around the table, quickly clinging to both my forelegs. "WE! You mean WE! You're not going alone, Josey! Together forever, remember?"  
I winced and looked down, nuzzling my muzzle in against Rhonda's mane and pressing a kiss on top of her head, feeling my tears press against the back of my eyes. "I can't, Rhonda.. You're an Earthpony with no magic potential. What if we were being chased by Earth's governments? What if Spritelight decided to use you as a means to blackmail me?"  
Rhonda looked up with tears rolling down her face. "B..but you promised. Y..y.. you promised, Jo... Rho and Jo forever.. You'd always protect me, you said."  
I sank down through my hooves and let her hug her forelegs around my neck instead of around my own forelegs. "That's what I'm doing, Rho. You'll be safe here, with the other princesses. Maybe you can visit Ponyville and get Pinkie to teach you how to pull things out of thin air, hmm?"  
A tear drooped down my muzzle and I shook it off before it would have landed on Rhonda's back.  
"She's right, Rhonda," Celestia spoke gently, her face wrought in pain at the inevitable parting to come. "We will keep you safe here, but Josey needs to go alone."  
"It's not fair!" Rhonda cried out, bawling loudly as she clung to me for dear life.  
"No, it's not," I sniffled, not able to stop the tears from coming no matter how strong I wanted to appear to her. "But I will make it right, Rhonda. And then we'll be together. Forever."

* * *

End of book 1.


End file.
